West.

Gladys had blue-black hair which she wore pulled out into a sort of
halo about her small, delicate face. There were points of light in her
dark irises, giving them the look of black quartz in the sunshine. She
was not tall, but her figure was perfect, and she had her dresses
fitted immediately to it. Her appeal was frankly to the senses, the
edge taken from its audacity by its artistic effectiveness and by her
ingenuous, almost innocent, expression.

Seeing Pauline looking at her, she tilted her head to a graceful angle
and sent a radiant glance between two blossom-laden branches of the
green and white bush that towered and spread in the center of the
table. "Mr. Scarborough says," she called out, "character isn't a
development, it's a disclosure. He thinks one is born a certain kind
of person and that one's life simply either gives it a chance to show
or fails to give it a chance. He says the boy isn't father to the man,
but the miniature of the man. What do you think, Pauline?"

"I haven't thought of it," replied Pauline. "But I'm certain it's
true. I used to dispute Mr. Scarborough's ideas sometimes, but I
learned better."

As she realized the implications of her careless remark, their eyes met
squarely for the first time since Battle Field. Both hastily glanced
away, and neither looked at the other again. When the men came up to
the drawing-room to join the women, Gladys adroitly intercepted him.
When he went to Pauline to take leave, their manner each toward the
other was formal, strained and even distant.

Dumont came again just after the November election. It had been an
unexpected victory for the party which Scarborough advocated, and
everywhere the talk was that he had been the chief factor--his skill in
defining issues, his eloquence in presenting them, the public
confidence in his party through the dominance of a man so obviously
free from self-seeking or political trickery of any kind. Dumont, to
whom control in both party machines and in the state government was a
business necessity, told his political agent, Merriweather, that they
had "let Scarborough go about far enough," unless he could be brought
into their camp.

"I can't make out what he's looking for," said Merriweather. "One
thing's certain--he'll do US no good. There's no way we can get our
hooks in him. He don't give a damn for money. And as for power--he
can get more of that by fighting us than by falling in line.