imney piece, on which stood a photograph of Natalie Rathbawne, smiling
out of a silver frame.

"I'll leave you to talk it out with her," he added simply.

In the hall, as he passed out, he caught a reflection of Cavendish in a
mirror. His hands were resting on the mantel-edge, and he was leaning
forward with his haggard face close to the photograph. Barclay looked at
his watch.

"Two o'clock," he said to himself, "and all's well!"

VII

THE MIRAGE OF POWER

Barclay was conscious of a feeling of exhilaration such as he had not
known for many weeks, as he swung into Bradbury Avenue late that
afternoon on his way to the Rathbawne residence. The duties of the day
had been inordinately petty and vexatious, but he had dispatched them
one and all with something approaching enthusiasm,--a touch of the old
Quixotic energy with which he had taken office. The morning conversation
in Governor Abbott's room had braced and toned him. He forgot its
inauspicious opening, and even his distress at the attempt to force him
into the position of mediator between Peter Rathbawne and the Union, in
the solid satisfaction of having been able to speak his mind to McGrath,
and call that worthy a blackguard to his face. He was a man who
despised a quarrel, but, for its own sake, loved a square, hard fight.

Back, however, of this somewhat inadequate excuse for cheerfulness lay
the Governor's assurance that in the matter of the strike his lieutenant
was to have free rein. It was the first time since the beginning of
their official association that Elijah Abbott had placed an actual
responsibility in Barclay's hands. A corner-stone laying, a banquet here
and there, the opening of a trolley line, or a library, or a
sewer,--these were the major calls upon the Lieutenant-Governor's time.
The main current of routine was a hopeless monotony of official
correspondence, investigations, statistics, reading and reporting on the
interminable and flatulent maunderings of the Legislature,--duties
heart-breaking in their desperate tedium and maddening inutility.

But at last here was responsibility, actual and deeply significant,
calling for the exercise of tact, courage, and immutable firmness. The
particular task was not one which he would have coveted, and yet he
welcomed it. Anything,--anything to assuage in him that sense of
ineptitude, of being ignored, a titled nonentity!

With this vast lightening of spirit came, not only gratitude, but