"But I am!" he cried, and picking her up in his arms, he sprang into the car, threw in the clutch, and dashed for the open country.

II

Ar first she said nothing, sinking into the depths of her fur collar and giving herself up to the soothing sensations of speed and the joyous fright of abduction, perhaps a heritage from former ages. He, too, said nothing, being still in a region of vehicles and frequent crossings. Finally her dignity compelled her to let him see a little of her disapproval. "The vibration screws," she remarked, looking straight down the road, "were all right when I left the machine."

"I know," he said; "it was done after you came to hear me speak."

"How do you know?" "I saw it done."

"Who did it?"

"Some foe of the money power."
"Why didn't you stop it?"
"But I'm a friend of the people."
"You did it!"

"Of course; putting the money power's machine out of business is my job, at present. Ask your father."

She looked at the fleeting landscape, the rising moon, and then at him. "I suppose you think you're very clever," she remarked sneeringly.

They were rounding a curve at rather high speed and centrifugal force had its way with her. She came very near him, indeed, and now was constrained to speak to him, too-a stiff apology for having clutched his arm. Perhaps it was his elbow. "Your apology is accepted," he said, turning his face away.

She knew he was laughing at her.
"Witty, aren't you?" she flung out.

"It was a pretty good joke on you, Nell, when you stop to think of it. You would come to hear me speak, would you? Well, I'll teach you how to trifle with a reformer." 'Quite proud of yourself!" "I'm proud of one thing."

She kept silent for a bounding half-mile. He was bending over the wheel. "I'm sure you want to know what I'm so proud of," he said, tooting for the trolley crossing. "I do not."

"Then I'll tell you. I," he said deliberately, "am honest about it, at any rate." "You mean that I'm not?" Her cheeks flushed.

"Here are your vibration screws. Even your father's crowd acknowledges that I'm honest."

Oh, to jump out and break her neck so that the blame would fall upon him and he should have remorse all the days of his life! But she didn't; they seldom do. Between her teeth she said, "If you only knew how

He observed the interesting curl of her

He reached down, engaged the high-speed gear, opened the throttle, and advanced the spark. "At this rate of speed, Nell? Really, I couldn't let you think of it."

"I prefer to go home by trolley." "I'm fighting the trolleys."

There was a silence. They raced on through the cool, open country, the coil purring in high notes of delight as the car ate up the white road, bounding over bridges with a roar, dashing past farm-houses, disappointing eager dogs which could not reach the fence in time to bark at them.

Presently the girl spoke again, still deep in her coat and still looking straight ahead: "Of course you realize that after this I can never have anything more to do with you; that I shall never speak to you; that I shall never come near you, that I-oh, oh!"

moonlight as he replied luxuriously: "Is that the reason you came to see me 'way over there, without any dinner?”

"I dined before starting, thank you." "Did you? Nice of you to think of ordering dinner early, stirring up old Gray, coming all that distance-all to hear me speak."

"Oh, I admit being curious” "Aha!"

"To see you make a spectacle of your self."

"But you liked my speech-you know you did. I know you did. A man can always tell."

"You convinced me of one thing: What they say about you is true."

"They say so many things. Do you be lieve them, Nell?”

He seemed serious and a little nicer in

that tone; but it did not save him. "You have convinced me that you are just as conceited as a man can be."

"That isn't true, Nell. I could be still more conceited-if you would only let me." She hurried away from that at once. "Also you amused me. It must amuse your 'peo-pul' too, pretending to be one of them-coming in an imported car to do it. Ha, ha!"

"It's sweet of you, Nell, to be so much concerned about my success. But don't you worry about the people," he went on in a calm, conversational tone, as if they were the best of friends. "That is just the mistake so many of the bosses-so many reformers make, too. The people know me pretty well by this time, so much better than you do, Nell. And they understand the issues of this campaign so much better, too. Did you ever stop to think how little you appreciate all this? I don't believe you even understood what I was talking about." "Oh, you don't?" she returned disdainfully. There was not enough difference in their ages to make her wish that he were younger, but there was quite enough to make her wish often that she were a little older. Just to show him that she was not the ignorant child he thought her, she now outlined his entire address. When she finished she found him bending over the wheel shaking with laughter.

"You dear thing! you lovely thing!" he cried jubilantly. "Conceited? Oh," he shouted aloud to the passing trees, echoing his horn from the distant hills, "there never was a man so conceited! Why, Nell, you must have been there the whole time! You must have listened to the whole speech!" Then, suddenly in the other tone, he said: "Oh, if I could only make you listen to me when I talk to you alone! No, don't be afraid, Nell, I won't. I know my place. But, oh, you dear, dear girl!" His voice came closer even though he did not. "If you only knew how I am missing you these days! If you only knew how I'm needing you! But that's all right, I'll shut up." He turned his gaze down the road again.

The combination of her emotions was almost too much for her. Just when he seemed to be taking her less seriously than ever he suddenly became devoted and deferential; while still showing her that he despised her he let her see how he loved her.

She resented his masculine arrogance, his mannish tactlessness, and she hated herself for wanting to cry. So because she felt her heart giving way a little in spite of everything she pushed forth these words to him in desperation:

"The reason I came to hear you, the reason I listened so closely, if you must have it"-her clear voice rang defiantly in the frosty air-"I wanted to see whether you attacked my father!"

"Was that it, Nell?" he asked quietly. "That was it."

The horn tooted dismally for a curve. He said nothing more.

It suddenly occurred to her for the first. time why her father's name had been so consistently spared in the candidate's speeches. It opened a rift in the clouds that had gathered over them of late. It was the sort of thing to appeal to a girl, and it set her thinking.

The silence continued for so long that she became exceedingly uncomfortable. She had wanted to sting, but not to injure. His actions and his words this evening were hard to forgive, but it was harder to forget the reason for them. Besides, even if he did play the game roughly, it was all in the spirit of banter and good sport; whereas she felt that she had now done the nasty, cattish thing. Straightway, like her impulsive sort, she wanted to take all the blame. But girlish pride closed her lips, so she bit them, hating herself, her sex, her situation.

As for the young man, he too was taking her remark with undue seriousness, being in love with her. He had, to be sure, made jocular allusions to his fight with her father's interests—just as he and the old man himself were accustomed to do when they met at the club-because it seemed more sensible and civilized than to ignore the matter with a humorless silence which would only proclaim it uncomfortably. But the girl's serious reference to the affair, whether she really had suspected him or not, seemed in very bad taste. He had not thought it of her. It made him rather bitter as he reflected how little she realized the kind of attack he could make on Colonel Hallowell, if he wanted to, and at what a sacrifice he refrained.

The candidate sighed and still held his peace. He no longer felt strong and confident; he felt weak and discouraged. The

cold, whistling air had cleared his brain of excitement and gayety. The reaction had now set in from the elation following his speech, a thing to be expected with temperaments of his sort, though he had never yet learned to expect it.

What was the use of doing the nice thing, when this was the way it was received by the one for whom it was done. Under all his romping badinage there had been a real craving for a little sympathy and understanding, the kind women can give. He was very tired. He had been going on his nerves for the past fortnight, and like a runner in the last lap, it sometimes seemed impossible to keep up the present pace until that terrible Tuesday, now only three days

away.

Within the last two weeks a reaction, subtly abetted by the machine, had also set in with the reform movement throughout the State. Every day his managers reported that he was losing ground. A month ago he could have won easily, but now even his most enthusiastic followers predicted a close finish; and Colonel Hallowell, Davidge happened to know, was as confident in private as he was blatant in public. He predicted that his man Holmes would be elected governor by fifty thousand majority. This would mean not merely the death of Davidge's political aspirations, but what mattered a great deal more to him (at least he thought it did), it would also mean that the reform movement would die, as so many others have, in ridicule and despair, with the machine more firmly riveted to the government than ever.

There was a way out, and the girl had reminded him of it in an unfortunate manner. One day two years ago when Davidge was still a regular party man the old gentleman had said: "Tom, there's an envelope at my office containing twenty-five thousand dollars. Of course I know you don't want any of it for yourself, but you better tell the boys to come around."

In itself it was not very astonishing; they all did it, all the corporations; but Davidge hadn't expected it of Colonel Hallowell. It had been, indeed, one of the things that had set the young man thinking and had helped to disgust him with the game as it was played. Now, at that time, perhaps it might not have excited an apathetic public, but in these two years the country had become

more sensitive about such matters. That much, at least, investigations, reform movements, and magazine exposures had accomplished. If this charge were made now against a man of Colonel Hallowell's standing it would be political capital worth far more than twenty-five thousand dollars to Davidge.

Finally, it reduced itself in his mind to a question of whether or not he really had any right to suppress truth which meant so much to the good cause merely out of a selfish sentiment for a girl (who did not appreciate him). He had the average human capacity for self-deception, you see, and therefore saw his duty now in a light that was denied him as long as he had any hope of winning the girl's approval. Therefore, not being of the sort to waste time in feeling his pulse or analyzing his motives, he straightway began to outline a new speech for Carusey which would arouse the whole State. was Saturday night. The thing would soak in effectively by Tuesday morning.

It

It was not to be much of a meeting; the machine had bought up all the available places in Carusey, except an assembly-room in the same building as the opera-house, where the opposition was holding its grand rally. Apparently the only reason the machine allowed them to have this place was because it had been undergoing repairs which were still unfinished. But it did not matter about the size of the audience as long as it included the inevitable reporters. They would do the rest.

Another sharp curve swept the girl almost into his arms. Her feet, clutching vainly at the rubber-covered floor of the car, slipped out from under her, and despite the low partition between the seats, Davidge felt the sweet weight of her slenderness against him. It was not a great weight, but it made him gasp, and his open lips caught a wind-swept wisp of odorous hair, which tingled him like a live wire. He had the sensitiveness of his kind to such influences and in his present overwrought nervous state the occurrence made him tremble as he clutched the wheel.

She recovered her balance quickly and merely remarked, with the comical drollness of the old days when things went better with them: "After all, we seem to be thrown together a good deal of late."

It was so like her to rise with smiling su

periority to a thing which would have embarrassed maidens of the blushing, bridling order. It was one of the qualities in her that had first made her seem worth while, and now it came up to him, with its train of precious associations, far more potent than her physical allure. He had to face what he loved and would lose to-night. His Carusey speech might help his chances for the governorship; it would kill his chances with the girl.

He had made no reply to her facetious remark and they rode on in silence, wasting several more miles of moonlight.

"Why don't you talk to me ?" she asked. "I've got to think about my speech," he said, trying hard to do so.

Then after a pause, "Tell me about your speech, Tom."

"You wouldn't understand it," he answered abruptly.

They were rapidly picking up familiar landmarks. Home would be upon them soon. She looked at him once more and smiled chaffingly. "I suppose you think you're going to make a very fine speech at Carusey," she said.

"The speech of my life," he muttered, without turning.

She laughed aloud at his momentous tone, not dreaming of what had been going on within his mind. "Plotting murder, or suicide-which is it?"

He laughed with her. "Murder," he said glibly. "One must make his choice in this world, Nell," he went on; "I'm done with suicide. We all come to it sooner or

later: The survival of the fittest; your life or mine. It's the scheme of the universe, and we happen to be part of the universe. Ideals is only another name for obstacles.

He paid no attention to her fooling; seemed not to hear her, so intent was he upon his speech, bending abstractedly over the wheel.

Her father, who, with good-natured cynicism, took it for granted that this efficient young man would get over "the reform stage" and come around to a practical view of certain matters after his approaching defeat, had once remarked to Nell that Tom had great powers of concentration. She turned now and looked at him, saying to herself, "He has great powers of concentration."

With that something happened he knew nothing of. Somehow or other there had suddenly come to her at last the old feminine desire to belong to a man; the thing she had struggled against so long, feared and liked, hated and wanted to happen. Her shoulder was against his and she shuddered and rejoiced as her heart leaped out to him. He seemed so brave and fine, fighting on with his back to the wall for an unselfish cause against an outnumbering foe and yet scorning their methods. It suddenly dawned upon her that she had a hero at her feet, and that she had only trampled upon him. He had said that he needed her; it was sweet to be needed by him. He looked drawn and tired. Oh, to be of some real use, to make up for all that had gone before! The preliminary struggle of the captive was over. She was ready to yield to him now.

self-annihilation; and surely the object of being can't be non-being. Yes, I'm done with suicide."

She looked round at him as if bored by his sententiousness. "Dear me," she said, "I'm terribly afraid of you!"

"What's more to the point," he replied, with an answering smile, "I'm not afraid of you, either!" "Aren't you?"

She did not like this. she asked.

They glared at each other for a moment in the moonlight. "Not a scrap, " he said. "Shall we go on down to the east drive or is the new road finished?"

"You needn't trouble," she said; "I'm going to Carusey with you!" "The deuce you are!" "Don't you want me?" "No."

laughing at the way she was throwing his own words back at him.

She, too, seemed to enjoy it, and replied: "It doesn't matter about that; I'm going to Carusey!"

He turned and looked at her with new interest, smiling at her with amused admiration, and withal a bit nervous. If Nell were in the audience what would become of his speech-and the governorship? "I really believe you think you are going," he said condescendingly.

"Perfectly positive of it," she replied complacently; "just as positive as that you really want me, though you won't acknowledge it."

"Talk about my conceit!"

"We aren't talking about you at all just now. We talked about you enough. I'm doing it, now.'

He laughed with the sheer joy of her, ignoring subsurface thoughts for the moment. "Who's running this car, anyway?" he demanded.

"You're running it," she returned suggestively.

"Well, you

He smiled banteringly. needn't swagger so," he said. "But I am proud of one thing," she said; "I am honest about it. I want to hear that 'speech of meh life,' and you're trying to make out that you don't want me to."

Davidge had stopped smiling banteringly. "Your feminine idea of wit, I suppose," he remarked, looking down the road.

"It is rather a good joke on you, Tom, when you stop to think about it; caught in your own trap! You would put the 'Money Powers' machine out of commission, would you? This is what you get for it." She felt herself, for some reason, gaining the ascendency more and more every moment. Her vitality went up as his went down. Perhaps one reason for this was because, previously, she had had something to conceal; now he had. The girl turned and laughed at him, jeered at him, felt sure of him, looked around at him again, and loved him.

He was becoming really alarmed, a premonition of defeat, perhaps. "You can't seriously think of travelling all over the State with me, Nell. Why, it'll be midnight when we get back!"

"The moon will be so bully, then," she said in a low tone, tempting him.

"Think of what your father would say." "Father's dining out. That's how I managed to slip away to hear you all to hear you, Tom," she added with burlesque sentimentality. It was what he had accused her of a few minutes ago.

"Your father," said Davidge with an air of settling the matter, "is at Carusey." She looked at him with the devil in her sweet eyes and said, "But not at our meeting, Tom."

"If you are really so much interested in 'our' meeting," he said desperately, "how do you expect me to account for a pretty woman, unchaperoned, late at night? Remember, they have spies all over looking for chances to make trouble for me."

"Oh, ho! you think you can shock me out of it, do you? Well, you can't! Tell everybody it's Colonel Hallowell's daughter; it will be a great card for the eloquent young reformer. Maybe they will think you've reformed me." She smiled and looked up at him artfully. "Perhaps you can-if you

try."

He turned his face away. "You unscrupulous little flirt!"

"I'm not flirting with you, Tom; I'm really very much impressed by you this evening. Won't you please let me go?"

"No," he shouted, "I won't."

She was laughing at him, palpably laughing, she felt so sure of victory, revelling in it joyously as she watched him wriggle in silence.

"Here's the lodge," he growled, and slowed up, swerving out to turn the car in between the posts.

Her hands closed on his. There was a momentary struggle for the guidance of the car. "Quick, Tom, or we'll run smash into the gate!"

He put on the brakes and stopped short. The car was still in the road. Her hands still clutched his, and through the two thicknesses of gloves he felt her determination. She looked sparklingly up at his face. The moon, being high enough by this time, looked down upon her face, which was sweet and very near, as perhaps she realized.

Suddenly he had her in his arms. "Let go of that wheel," he whispered, gulping, "or I'll kiss you, Nell!"

"I'm going with you," she said steadily, "and you will never kiss me unless I allow it.