needn't have told me what
he didn't care to tell, yet he could have helped me to pay my month's
rent as easily as could be."

As for Peter, he fell into a long stride, and his face nearly equalled
his stride in length. After he reached his quarters he sat and smoked,
with the same serious look. He did not look cross. He did not have the
gloom in his face which had been so fixed an expression for the last
month. But he looked as a man might look who knew he had but a few hours
to live, yet to whom death had no terror.

"I am giving up," Peter thought, "everything that has been my true life
till now. My profession, my friends, my chance to help others, my books,
and my quiet. I shall be misunderstood, reviled and hated. Everything I
do will be distorted for partisan purposes. Friends will misjudge.
Enemies will become the more bitter. I give up fifty thousand dollars a
year in order to become a slave, with toadies, trappers, lobbyists and
favor-seekers as my daily quota of humanity. I even sacrifice the larger
part of my power."

So ran Peter's thoughts, and they were the thoughts of a man who had not
worked seventeen years in politics for nothing. He saw alienation of
friends, income, peace, and independence, and the only return a mere
title, which to him meant a loss, rather than a gain of power. Yet this
was one of the dozen prizes thought the best worth striving for in our
politics. Is it a wonder that our government and office-holding is left
to the foreign element? That the native American should prefer any other
work, rather than run the gauntlet of public opinion and press, with
loss of income and peace, that he may hold some difficult office for a
brief term?

But finally Peter rose. "Perhaps she'll like it," he said aloud, and
presumably, since no woman is allowed a voice in American politics, he
was thinking of Miss Columbia. Then he looked at some photographs, a
scrap of ribbon, a gold coin (Peter clearly was becoming a money
worshipper), three letters, a card, a small piece of blotting-paper, a
handkerchief (which Leonore and Peter had spent nearly ten minutes in
trying to find one day), a glove, and some dried rose-leaves and
violets. Yet this was the man who had grappled an angry tiger but two
hours before and had brought it to lick his hand.

He went to bed very happy.

CHAPTER XLIX.

CLOUDS.

But a month later he was far happier, for one morning towards the end of
August, his mail brou