itude and
considerations like that are holding him back. But I'm not a
partisan--not even on dad's side. I'm the philosopher who sits on the
fence and keeps the score by innings."

It seemed to her, in those days and afterward, that Allen symbolized the
unknown quantity in all the problems that absorbed him. His idealism was
not a thing of the air, but a flowering from old and vigorous roots. His
politics was a kind of religion, and it did not prove upon analysis to
be either so fantastical or so fanatical as she had believed at first.
As the days shortened, he would prolong their walk until the shops and
factories discharged their employees upon the streets. The fine thing
about the people was, he said, the fact that they were content to go on
from day to day, doing the things they did, when the restraints upon
them were so light,--it proved the enduring worth of the Great
Experiment. Then they would plunge into the thick of the crowd and cross
the Monument plaza, where he never failed to pay a tribute in his own
fashion to the men the gray shaft commemorated. In these walks they
spoke French, which he employed more readily than she: in his high moods
it seemed to express him better than English. It amused him to apply new
names to the thoroughfares they traversed. For example, he gayly renamed
Monument Place the Place de la Concorde, assuring her that the southward
vista in the Rue de la Meridienne, disclosing the lamp-bestarred terrace
of the new Federal Building, and the electric torches of the Monument
beyond, was highly reminiscent of Paris. Sylvia was able to dramatize
for herself, from the abundant material he artlessly supplied, the life
he had led abroad during his long exile: as a youngster he had enjoyed
untrammeled freedom of the streets of Paris and Berlin, and he showed a
curiously developed sympathy for the lives of the poor and unfortunate
that had been born of those early experiences. He was a great resource
to her, and she enjoyed him as she would have enjoyed a girl comrade. He
confessed his admiration for Marian in the frankest fashion. She was
adorable; the greatest girl in the world.

"Ah, sometime," he would say, "who knows!"

CHAPTER XXIII

A HOUSE-BOAT ON THE KANKAKEE

Harwood's faith in Bassett as a political prophet was badly shaken by
the result of the campaign that fall. About half the Democratic
candidates for state office were elected, but even more surprising was
the rollin