t to the window, relieved to
find that the sun had scattered my morbid fancies with the darkness;
and I speculated, as I dressed, whether the thing called conscience
were not, after all, a matter of nerves. I went downstairs through the
tobacco-stale atmosphere of the lobby into the fresh air and sparkly
sunlight of the mild February morning, and leaving the business district
I reached the residence portion of the little town. The front steps of
some of the comfortable houses were being swept by industrious servant
girls, and out of the chimneys twisted, fantastically, rich blue smoke;
the bare branches of the trees were silver-grey against the sky; gaining
at last an old-fashioned, wooden bridge, I stood for awhile gazing at
the river, over the shallows of which the spendthrift hand of nature had
flung a shower of diamonds. And I reflected that the world was for the
strong, for him who dared reach out his hand and take what it
offered. It was not money we coveted, we Americans, but power, the
self-expression conferred by power. A single experience such as I had
had the night before would since to convince any sane man that democracy
was a failure, that the world-old principle of aristocracy would assert
itself, that the attempt of our ancestors to curtail political power had
merely resulted in the growth of another and greater economic power that
bade fair to be limitless. As I walked slowly back into town I felt a
reluctance to return to the noisy hotel, and finding myself in front of
a little restaurant on a side street, I entered it. There was but one
other customer in the place, and he was seated on the far side of the
counter, with a newspaper in front of him; and while I was ordering my
breakfast I was vaguely aware that the newspaper had dropped, and that
he was looking at me. In the slight interval that elapsed before my
brain could register his identity I experienced a distinct shock of
resentment; a sense of the reintrusion of an antagonistic value at a
moment when it was most unwelcome....

The man had risen and was coming around the counter. He was Hermann
Krebs.

"Paret!" I heard him say.

"You here?" I exclaimed.

He did not seem to notice the lack of cordiality in my tone. He appeared
so genuinely glad to see me again that I instantly became rather ashamed
of my ill nature.

"Yes, I'm here--in the legislature," he informed me.

"A Solon!"

"Exactly." He smiled. "And you?" he inquired.

"Oh, I'