It was dark when the news came to Cluhir, six o’clock of a wet night.  The counting of the votes had taken place elsewhere, and the word was to come by wire.  Barty and Larry, with others of the rival “Commy-tees,” had hung about between the post-office, and their respective offices, and houses of call, all day.  Many drinks had been drunk, many bets been laid; before the news came through, Larry’s proclaimed indifference as to the result had worn so thin as to be imperceptible.  It seemed to him, during the tedious hours of that dark and wet afternoon, that success in this enterprise was the only thing left in life worth having.  To triumph, secretly, over that secret clerical opposition, to snap his fingers, openly, at Georgy Talbot-Lowry’s impudence and all that it implied of hostility and contempt.  These were the great objects of life, the things that justified all the double dealing, and the lies, and the humbug of the past weeks.  There was no such thing as patriotism, and ideals were rot.  He had claimed last night to be a single-minded patriot, but to-day he knew better; he had become a man, and had put ideals away, with love, and other childish things.  The main thing was to have your desire of your enemy.

He was standing in the heavy downpour on the outskirts of the group that waited outside the post-office; he was sick with suspense and fatigue, and hardly troubled to move as a motor came slowly nosing its way through the crowd.  It passed within a few inches of him and stopped.  He heard the Big Doctor’s voice.

“Get into the car out of the rain,” it commanded.  “D’ye want to be ill on my hands again?  I’ll run you down to No. 6.  Let Barty ’phone the news to you.  Isn’t that what he’s for?”

Larry was alone in the dining-room of No. 6 when the telephone summoned him.  He had eaten nothing since breakfast; his hand shook with cold and excitement, and he could scarcely hold the switch firmly.

“Burke, 1047; Coppinger, 705;” Barty’s voice sounded flat and without emotion.  “Majority against us, 342.  Can you hear?  Adverse majority, 342!  They’ve beaten us to babby-rags!” The voice ceased.

Larry said:  “All right, old chap.  Thanks!” and hung up the receiver.

He returned to the dirty, comfortable old sofa by the fire.

Beaten! and Larry was used to victory.  In all his twenty-five years of life, he had never been thwarted.  What he wished to do, that he did, in games, in sport, in art.  He might have said, with Beatrice:  “There was a star danced, and under that was I born!”

The first defeat he could remember was the one he had suffered at Christian’s hands, and here he was, turned down again, twice in a month!

“My luck’s out!” he said, staring at the flickering, whispering fire, and feeling that ebbing of life which will befall, even at five and twenty, when exhaustion, that has been held at bay by excitement and hope, comes to its own.