s she here?"

"She's in Saratoga, I believe."

"Belief again? We really ought to read the papers."

He tried to search her face, but the pebble-throwing prevented. The
Widow Weatherwax had expatiated on the topic of Mrs. Bernard Graves's
unhappiness, with tedious variations on the saw about marrying in haste
to repent at leisure. He wondered--he scarce knew what. She drew him
with all the old attraction, but an elusive something had vanished. He
guessed that it was the essence of youth, though the form lingered.

"Are you happy, Ruth?" he asked abruptly.

She looked him in the eyes, and laughed.

"That reminds me of your unofficial self," she said. "You never could
invent small talk for the feminine mind."

"You were never the kind of woman who wanted it."

"I better appreciate its uses nowadays. It conceals either the absence
or presence of thought. Bless me! there's an epigram. But I'm afraid
it's merely an echo of Voltaire."

He was not listening. A midsummer madness rioted in his brain.

"But are you happy?"

"Small talk, small talk," she insisted. "See how that yacht's sails
take the sun. Isn't the water a splendid sapphire? Do you like to
fish? Do you prefer Tennyson or Browning? Meredith or Hardy? Isn't
it warm? Isn't it cool?"

"But are you?"

She rose and faced him with strange eyes.

"What do you want?"

"Want," he repeated mechanically, rising too.

"Why have you come here in your pomp of governorship and promise of
greater things to harass me?"

"Harass you, Ruth! If you knew--"

"Know? I know too much. I'm unlearning things now. That's the key to
happiness--forgetting. And here come you, as you used to come, an
untamed, masterful force--that's what you are, a force!--and instead of
forgetting you ask me to remember. What is it you're really seeking in
this probing of my happiness? What must you be told?"

"Nothing." With the revelation of the flaw in her armor he conquered
self. "I know--God help me!--I know."

CHAPTER VI

The Boss questioned the wisdom of the Tuscarora speech, and the fall
widened the unacknowledged breach between him and the governor. The
September primaries had assured the leader a firmer control of the
state convention than he had ever exercised, and it was well understood
to be his, and his alone, made to his order, and the docile register of
his will. That this victory clinched his ownership of the delegation
to the nationa