Selma had listened in amazement. "It's a trap," she murmured. "Horace Elton has led you into a trap." The thought that Elton's politeness to her was a blind, and that she had been made sport of, took precedence in her resentment even of the annoyance caused her by her husband's deceit. "Why did you conceal all this from me?" she asked, tragically. "I should not have done so, perhaps." "If you had told me, this difficulty never would have arisen. Pshaw! It is not a real difficulty. Surely you must throw Elton over. Surely you must veto the bill." "Throw him over," stammered Lyons. "You don't understand, Selma. I gave my word as a business man. I am under great obligations to him." He told briefly the details of the transaction; even the hypothecation of the Parsons bonds. For once in his life he made a clean breast of his bosom's perilous stuff. He was ready to bear the consequences of his plight rather than be false to his man's standard of honor, and yet his wife's opposition had fascinated as well as startled him. He set forth his case--the case which meant his political checkmate, then waited. Selma had risen and stood with folded arms gazing into distance with the far away look by which she was wont to subdue mountains. "Have you finished?" she asked. "What you are proposing to do is to sacrifice your life--and my life, James Lyons, for the sake of a--er--fetish. Horace Elton, under the pretence of friendship for us, has taken advantage of your necessities to extract from you a promise to support an evil scheme--a bill to defraud the plain American people of their rights--the people whose interests you swore to protect when you took the oath as Governor. Is a promise between man and man, as you call it, more sacred than everlasting truth itself? More binding than the tie of principle and political good faith? Will you refuse to veto a bill which you know is a blow at liberty in order to keep a technical business compact with an over-reaching capitalist, who has no sympathy with our ideas? I am disappointed in you, James. I thought you could see clearer than that." Lyons sighed. "I examined the bill at the time with some care, and did not think it inimical to the best public interest; but had I foreseen the objections which would be raised against it, I admit that I never would have agreed to sign it."