“Whether you win or not,” she answered, “I am glad that at last I am on your side.”

His face lighted.  “On my side?  Even if it means failure?”

As she looked up at him the sunrise was in her face.  The sky was turning slowly to flame-colour, and each dark pointed leaf of the magnolia tree stood out illuminated against a background of fire.  “It may be failure, but it is magnificent,” she said.

He was smiling down on her from his great height; and while she stood there in that clear golden air, she felt again, as she had felt twice before when she was with him, that beneath the depth of her personal life, in that buried consciousness which belonged to the ages of being, something more real than any actual experience she had ever known was responding to the look in his eyes and the sound of his voice.  All that she had missed in life—­completeness, perfection—­seemed to shine about her for an instant before it passed on into the sunlight.  A fancy, nothing more!  A fading gleam of some lost wildness of youth!  For if she had spoken the thought in her mind while she stood there, she would have said, “Give me what I have never had.  Make me what I have never been.”  But she did not speak it; the serene friendliness of her look did not alter; and the impulse vanished as swiftly as the shadow of a bird in flight.

“I thank you,” he answered in a low voice.  “I shall remember that.”

The moment had passed, and she held out her hand with a smile.  “I shall come to stay with Patty while you are at the meeting to-night,” she said; and then, as she turned away to the car, he walked beside her in silence.

A little later, when she looked back from the gate, she saw him standing in the bright grass with the sunrise above his head.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE VICTORY OF GIDEON VETCH

That evening, when Corinna got out of her car before the Governor’s house, Stephen Culpeper opened the door, and came down the steps.

“I waited for you,” he said; and then as the car moved away, he took her hand and turned back to the porch.

“I couldn’t come before,” explained Corinna.  “I had a headache all day, and it kept me in bed.  Have you seen Patty?”

“I have seen her, but that is all.  I can do nothing with her.”

“But she cares for you.”

“She doesn’t deny it.  That’s not the trouble.  Something about Vetch stands in the way.  I can’t make out what she means.”

“Let me talk to her,” responded Corinna reassuringly.  “Is the Governor here?”

“No, he has gone to the strikers’ meeting.  They must reach some decision to-night it appears.  I have talked with him, and I believe he will stand firm whatever happens.  It means, I think, that his career is over.”

“It is too late for him to win over the conservative forces?”

“It was always too late.  In a battle of extremes the most dangerous position is in the centre.”