perate, love of
democracy, which he feared was in danger of dying out in the
land--quietly and painlessly suffocated by a narrowing oligarchy which
sought to blind the people to its rule by allowing them the exercise
of democracy's dead forms.

His square, rude face, which she watched with a rising fascination,
was no longer repellent. It had that compelling beauty, superior to
mere tint and moulding of the flesh, which is born of great and
glowing ideas. She saw that there was sweetness in his nature, that
beneath his rough exterior was a violent, all-inclusive tenderness.

Now and then she put in a word of discriminating approval, now and
then a word of well-reasoned dissent.

"I believe you are even more radical than I am!" he exclaimed, looking
at her keenly.

"A woman, if she is really radical, has got to be more radical than a
man. She sees all the evils and dangers that he sees, and in addition
she suffers from injustices and restrictions from which man is wholly
free."

He was too absorbed in the afterglow of what he had been saying to
take in all the meanings implicated in her last phrase.

"Do you know," he said, as they neared the town, "you are the first
woman I have met in Westville to whom one could talk about real things
and who could talk back with real sense."

A very sly and pat remark upon his inconsistency was at her tongue's
tip. But she realized that he had spoken impulsively, unguardedly, and
she felt that it would be little short of sacrilege to be even gently
sarcastic after the exalted revelation he had made of himself.

"Thank you," she said quietly, and turned her face and smiled at the
now steel-blue reaches of the river.

He dropped in several evenings to see her. When he was in an
idealistic mood she was warmly responsive. When he was arbitrary and
opinionated, she met him with chaffing and raillery, and at such times
she was as elusive, as baffling, as exasperating as a sprite. On
occasions when he rather insistently asked her plans and her progress
in her father's case, she evaded him and held him at bay. She felt
that he admired her, but with a grudging, unwilling admiration that
left his fundamental disapproval of her quite unshaken.

The more she saw of this dogmatic dreamer, this erratic man of action,
the more she liked him, the more she found really admirable in him.
But mixed with her admiration was an alert and pugnacious fear, so big
was he, so powerful, so violentl