t up for me," he directed kindly. "I'll see to this fire,
and remember not to blow out the gas."

The relic of the old regime restrained his surprise at these democratic
doings, smiled decorously, and withdrew. Jocosity slipped out at his
dignified heels. The man before the fire drank deep in self-communion,
and his face was grave. For the first time that crowded day he could
look his future in the face. Yet, evoked by a woman's handclasp in the
long line which had filed by him as he stood in the executive chamber
surrounded by his glittering staff, it was the past which most absorbed
him. It struck him as a wanton caprice of fate that they should have
been flung together that day. Ruth, whom he had promised a share in
these honors; Ruth, whom he had boasted that he would return and claim;
Ruth, whom he had put away because he must, because of a loftier
standard which--grimmest irony of all!--she herself had unwittingly set
up. He wondered--as he had wondered often in the years which had
witnessed her marriage, his own, and his rise to power--whether she
_had_ waited that night; whether she _had_ cared as he, apart from the
red passion of the struggle, could perceive that he had cared.

A vagrant memory of the morning's inauguration intruded. The moment of
his oath had been a time of solemn consecration for him, a laying on of
hands unseen; the shades of his greatest predecessors stood round
about; the genius of the state was in presence. Then came Cora and
kissed him. Emotional souls in the gallery applauded the act, but the
husband divined its prompting egoism and was cold.

CHAPTER II

Neither the public nor the honorable body to which it was directly
addressed took the new governor's message stressing general
retrenchment and the pruning of useless offices seriously. Nothing in
the recent course of the party wooed faith in its promises to purge and
live cleanly, and the accident of a huge majority in the late
elections, owing to national issues, had set not a few mouths watering
for fruits of victory which had lately dangled out of reach. The
machine was perfected to its utmost, and the young year was held to
signalize the full flowering of the Boss's topping supremacy. The
great man was now master of the county committees of the metropolis and
the greater cities; of the State Committee; of the Legislature, of the
lieutenant-governor, and apparently of Shelby. The cartoons depicted
the chief