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“I suppose so,” he said, and choked, with a kind of despairing sound; “I don’t see any way out of it.”

“Go ahead,” I told him. “I reckon I’m old enough to keep my counsel. Let it go, Farwell.”

“Do you know,” he began, with a sharp, grinding of his teeth, “that dishonourable scoundrel has had me watched, ever since there was talk of me for the fusion candidate? He’s had me followed, shadowed, till he knows more about me than I do myself.”

I saw right there that I’d never really measured Gorgett for as tall as he really was. “Have a cigar?” I asked Knowles, and lit one myself. But he shook his head and went on:

“You remember my taking you to call on General Buskirk’s daughter?”

“Quite well,” said I, puffing pretty hard.

“An angel! A white angel! And this beast, this boodler has the mud in his hands to desecrate her white garments!”

“Oh,” says I.

The angel’s knight began to pace the room as he talked, clinching and unclinching his hands, while the perspiration got his hair all scraggly on his forehead. You see Farwell was doing some suffering and he wasn’t used to it.

“When she came home from abroad, a year ago,” he said, “it seemed to me that a light came into my life. I’ve got to tell you the whole thing,” he groaned, “but it’s hard! Well, my wife is taken up with our little boy and housekeeping,–I don’t complain of her, mind that–but she really hasn’t entered into my ambitions, my inner life. She doesn’t often read my editorials, and when she does, she hasn’t been serious in her consideration of them and of my purposes. Sometimes she differed openly from me and sometimes greeted my work for truth and light with indifference! I had learned to bear this, and more; to save myself pain I had come to shrink from exposing my real self to her. Then, when this young girl came, for the first time in my life I found real sympathy and knew what I thought I never should know; a heart attuned to my own, a mind that sought my own ideals, a soul of the same aspirations–and a perfect faith in what I was and in what it was my right to attain. She met me with open hands, and lifted me to my best self. What, unhappily, I did not find at home, I found in her–encouragement. I went to her in every mood, always to be greeted by the most exquisite perception, always the same delicate receptiveness. She gave me a sister’s love!”

I nodded; I knew he thought so.

“Well, when I went into this campaign, what more natural than that I should seek her ready sympathy at every turn, than that I should consult with her at each crisis, and, when I became the fusion candidate, that I should go to her with the news that I had taken my first great step toward my goal and had achieved thus far in my struggle for the cause of our hearts–reform?”

“You went up to Buskirk’s after the convention?” I asked.

“No; the night before.” He took his head in his hands and groaned, but without pausing in his march up and down the room. “You remember, it was known by ten o’clock, after the primaries, that I should receive the nomination. As soon as I was sure, I went to her; and I found her in the same state of exaltation and pride that I was experiencing myself. There was always the answer in her, I tell you, always the response that such a nature as mine craves. She took both my hands and looked at me just as a proud sister would. ‘I read your news,’ she said. ‘It is in your face!’ Wasn’t that touching? Then we sat in silence for a while, each understanding the other’s joy and triumph in the great blow I had struck for the right. I left very soon, and she came with me to the door. We stood for a moment on the step–and–for the first time, the only time in my life–I received a–a sister’s caress.”