n Hill behind violet-shaded
panes of glass. No one would have guessed, when he talked about
cleaning out a disreputable school-board by means of the women's vote,
that he had once opposed parades for equal suffrage in Massachusetts.
When Bob shook hands with me, firmly, shortly, as if scarcely seeing me
at all, I wondered if it might have slipped his mind that I was the girl
he had once been engaged to marry.

He explained that he was in town on business, leaving the same evening.
He could give me only an hour. There was a man he had to meet at his
hotel at five. Bob was all nerves and energy that day. He talked about
himself a good deal. They wanted to get him into politics out there in
that wonderful little city of his. He'd been there only fourteen months,
but it was a great place, full of promise--politics in a rather rotten
condition--needed cleaning and fumigating. He'd a good mind to get into
the job himself--in fact, he might as well confess he was in it to some
extent. He was meeting the governor in Chicago the next night, or else
he'd stay over and ask me to go to the theater with him.

I don't suppose Bob would have referred to the old days if I hadn't. It
was I, who, when at last a lull occurred, said something about that time
when he had found me struggling in a mire that threatened to drown, and
I had grasped his good, strong arm.

"Wasn't it better, Bob," I asked, "that I should learn to swim myself,
and keep my head above water by my own efforts?"

"It certainly seems to be what women are determined to do," he dodged.

"Well, isn't it better?" I insisted.

"I'll say this, Ruth," he generously conceded. "I think there would be
less men dragged down if all women learned a few strokes in
self-support."

"Oh, Bob!" I exclaimed. "Do you really think that? So do I. Why, _so do
I!_ We agree! Women would not lose their heads so quickly in times of
catastrophe, would they? You see it, too! Women would help carry some of
the burden. All they'd need would be one hand on a man's shoulder, while
they swam with the other and made progress."

He laughed a little sadly. "Ruth," he said, for the first time becoming
the Bob I had known, "I fear you would not need even one hand on a
shoulder. It looks to me," he added, as he gazed about the luxuriously
furnished living-room of Van de Vere's, "that you can reach the shore
quite well alone."

CHAPTER XXIX

LONGINGS

The days at Van de Vere's grew gradua