To all appearances she had spoken to dull ears.  Occasionally their eyes had met, but his gaze had wandered away to range the walls.  When she ceased he moved restlessly about the room.

“You think I am as bad as that?” he asked, pausing by the table and looking down at her.

“You are as bad—­and as good—­as that,” she replied, the hope that stirred in her heart lighting her face.

He shrugged his shoulders and sat down.

“You have the wit to see that the old order of things is passing; the old apparatus you have learned to operate with a turn of the hand is out of date.  Now is your chance to leave the shadow life and begin again.  It’s not too late to win the confidence—­the gratitude even—­of the people who now distrust and fear you.  The day of reckoning is coming fast for men like you, who have made a mystery of politics, playing it as a game in the dark.  I don’t pretend to know much of these things, but I can see that men of your type are passing out; there would be no great glory for you in waiting to be the last to go.  And there are things enough for you to do.  If you ally yourself with the good causes that cry for support and leadership, you can be far more formidable than you have ever been as a skulking trickster; you can lead men up as you have led them down.”

“The change is coming; I have seen it coming,” he replied, catching at the one thing it seemed safest to approve.

But she was not to be thwarted by his acquiescence in generalities.  He saw that she had brought him back to a point whence he must elect his course, but he did not flinch at the flat restatement of her demand.

“You have done nothing to deserve the senatorship; you are not the choice of the people of this state.  You must relinquish it; you must give it up!”

The earnestness with which she uttered her last words seemed, to her surprise, to amuse him.

“You think,” he said, “that I should go back and make a new start by a different route?  But I don’t know the schedule; my transportation is good on only one line.”  And he grinned at his joke.

“Oh, you will have to pay your fare!” she replied quickly.  “You’ve never done that.”

His grin became a smile, and he said:  “You want me to walk if I can’t pay my way!”

“Yes,” she laughed happily, feeling that her victory was half won; “and you would have to be careful to stop, look, and listen at the crossings!”

The allusion further eased the stress of the hour; humor shone in his gray eyes.  He consulted his watch, frowned, bent his eyes upon the floor, then turned to her with disconcerting abruptness.

“I haven’t been half the boss you think me.  I’ve been hedged in, cramped, and shackled.  All these fellows who hop the stick when I say ‘Jump’ have their little axes I must help grind.  I’ve fooled away the best years of my life taking care of these little fellows, and I’ve spent a lot of money on them.  It’s become a little monotonous, I can tell you.  It’s begun to get on my nerves, for I have a few; and all this hammering I’ve taken from the newspapers has begun to make me hot.  I know about as much as they do about the right and wrong of things; I suppose I know something about government and the law too!”