West leaned back in his chair and stared at the farther wall....  For that was exactly what it was—­an unimportant detail.  The important thing, the one thing that he himself had insisted on, was that the State should have a reformatory.  Whether the State had it now or two years from now, made relatively little difference, except to those who, like his editorial assistant, had sunk themselves in the question till their sense of proportion had deserted them.  Was not that a fair statement of the case?  Whatever he did, he must not let his views be colored by probable effects upon his own future....  Surely, to wait two brief years for the institution, with the positive assurance of it then, could be no hardship to a State which had got along very well without it for all the years of its lifetime.  Surely not.  Plonny Neal, whose sharp horse sense he would back against any man in the State, was absolutely sound there.

He tried to consider the question with chill judiciality, and believed that he was doing so.  But the fervor which Plonny had imparted to it, and the respect which he had for Plonny’s knowledge of practical conditions, stood by him, unconsciously guiding his thoughts along the line of least resistance....  Though nobody dared admit it publicly, the party was facing a great crisis; and it was in his hand to save or to wreck it.  All eyes were anxiously on the Post, which wielded the decisive power.  The people had risen with the unreasonable demand that progress be checked for a time, because of the cost of it.  The leaders had responded to the best of their ability, but necessary expenses were so great that it was going to be a narrow shave at best—­so narrow that another hundred thousand spent would land the whole kettle of fish in the fire.  The grand old party would go crashing down the precipice.  Was not that a criminal price to pay for getting a reformatory institution two years before the people were ready to pay for it?  There was the whole question in a nutshell.

The one unpleasant aspect of this view was Sharlee Weyland, the dearest girl in the world.  She would be much disappointed, and, for the first moment, would possibly be somewhat piqued with him personally.  He knew that women were extremely unreasonable about these things; they looked at affairs from the emotional point of view, from the point of view of the loose, large “effect.”  But Sharlee Weyland was highly intelligent and sensible, and he had not the smallest doubt of his ability to make her understand what the unfortunate situation was.  He could not tell her everything—­Plonny had cautioned secrecy about the real gravity of the crisis—­but he would tell her enough to show her how he had acted, with keen regrets, from his sternest sense of public duty.  It was a cruel stroke of fate’s that his must be the hand to bring disappointment to the girl he loved, but after all, would she not be the first to say that he must never put his regard for her preferences above the larger good of City and State?  He could not love her, dear, so well, loved he not honor more.