But as the days went by, and opportunity gave them their hours together, they were drawn more closely, each insisting in secret meditation that it was not love.  He found himself gradually rebuilding his creed of living on the foundation she had laid in that first long talk of theirs.  He had arrived at such a point of belief in her that he was glad that she had opened his eyes.  He was finding men—­meeting them by the hundred—­even as she had pictured them to him:  selfish, scheming, crafty, and not understanding in the least his occasional attempts to meet them on the upper level of perfect candor.  For her part, she found more in this young man than she had expected to find.

Harlan considered Herbert Linton the single jarring note in this new symphony of mutual interests.

Linton came to the capital with more or less regularity, and called on the Pressons with fully as much appearance of being entirely at home as his newer rival.  When they were together the girl treated both with impartial interest and attention.  She listened to each in turn, and if they chose to sit and scowl at each other she did the talking for all three.  Deftly she arranged that they should leave together, and they always promptly separated as soon as they reached the sidewalk, as though they were afraid to trust themselves in each other’s company.

So the new year came in, and the hordes of lawmakers, lobbyists, lookers-on, and laymen descended on the State capital.

The first few days of a legislative session, though packed full of politics and business, rush, and routine, are festival days, after all.  There are the old friends to greet and the new friends to meet.  There are ten spectators to every legislator, and the spectators are on hand for a good time.  Outside of the factional clinches of the House and Senate caucuses the early days have little serious business.

Presson’s great hotel and the lesser lights of the capital’s houses of entertainment were packed to their roofs.  The State House on the hill sent sparkling radiance at night from all its hundreds of windows out across the snow which loaded the broad lawns.  Senator Pownal, renominated in joint caucus, spoke to crowded floor and galleries on the second evening.  Harlan Thornton, in his seat in the House, listened and wondered if that convention had not been a dream.

This later convocation seemed so entirely harmonious.

The Republicans ruled House and Senate by safe majorities.  Presson, sauntering about hotel or State House lobby, seemed bland and contented again.  The wounds in the party seemed to have been healed.

On inauguration day Governor Waymouth added to the general spirit of harmony.

He came unobtrusively to the State House from the modest mansion he had leased in the capital city for the legislative winter and took his oath of office before an admiring throng.  He had made a confidant of no one regarding his inaugural speech.  There were vague rumors that the Governor would follow his hand, as he had shown it in his letter of acceptance, and deliver an inaugural address which would blister the ears of the politically unregenerate.