“Yes,” Sylvia assented eagerly.

He readjusted himself in his chair, crossing his legs and thrusting his hands into his trousers pockets.

“It would be rather cheerful and comfortable,” he continued musingly, as though unburdening himself of old grievances, “to be free to do as you like once in a lifetime!  Those fellows in Thatcher’s herd who have practically sold out to me and are ready to deliver the goods to-night are all rascals, swung my way by a few corporations that would like to have me in Washington.  It would be a good joke to fool them and elect a man who couldn’t be bought!  It’s funny, but I’ve wondered sometimes whether I wasn’t growing tired of the old game.”

“But the new game you can play better than any of them.  It’s the only way you can find peace.”

With a gesture half-bold, half-furtive, he put out his hand and touched lightly the glove she had drawn off and laid on the table.

“You believe in me; you have some faith left in me?”

“Yes.”

Her hand touched his; her dark eyes searched the depths of his soul—­sought and found the shadows there and put them to flight.  When she spoke it was with a tenderness that was new to all his experience of life; he had not known that there could be balm like this for a bruised and broken spirit.  This girl, seeking nothing for herself, refusing anything he could offer, had held up a mirror in which he saw himself limned against dancing, mocking shadows.  Nothing in her arraignment had given him a sharper pang than her reference to his loneliness, his failure to command sympathy and confidence in his home relationships.  No praise had ever been so sweet to him as hers; she not only saw his weaknesses and dealt with them unsparingly, but she recognized also the strength he had wasted and the power he had abused.  She saw life in broad vistas as he had believed he saw it; he was not above a stirring of pride that she appreciated him and appraised his gifts rightly.  He had long played skillfully upon credulity and ignorance; he had frittered away his life in contentions with groundlings.  It would be a relief, if it were possible, to deal with his peers, the enlightened, the far-seeing, and the fearless, who strove for great ends.  So he pondered, while outside the sentinel kept watch like a fate.

“Yes,” Sylvia was saying slowly, “you can make restitution.  But not to the dead—­not to my mother asleep over there at Montgomery, oh, not to me!  What is done is past, and you can’t go back.  There’s no going back in this world.  But you can go on—­you can go on and up—­”

“No!  You don’t see that; you don’t believe that?”

“Yes, I believe it.  The old life—­the life of mystery and duplicity is over; you will never go back to the old way.”

“The old way?” he repeated.

“The old unhappy way.”

“Up there at the lake you knew I was unhappy; you knew things weren’t right with me?”