“No, son; not this evening,” he said.  “I’ve been feeling sort of set up and aristocratic to-day, and I’ve just ordered a dinner sent upstairs.  I reckon you’ll join me?”

The young man was willing enough; more than willing, since he was now ready to say a thing which must be said before he could be prepared to set a time limit upon Gantry—­a limit beyond which lay the firing of the fuse and the blowing up of all things mundane.

“Certainly,” he agreed.  “Give me a few minutes to change my clothes—­”

“You look good enough to me just as you are, boy,” said the dinner-giver, and he took his son by the arm and walked him to the elevator.

In the private dining-room Blount found the table laid for two, much as if his coming had been pre-figured.  He let that go, and for the time the talk was of the doings at Wartrace Hall:  of the professor’s enthusiastic digging for fossils, of Patricia’s keen enjoyment of the life in the open, and—­this put with gentle hesitation on the part of the news-bringer—­of Mrs. Honoria’s growing affection for the young woman whose ambitions reached out toward a sociological career.

“You say Patricia is learning to drive a car?” queried Patricia’s lover.

“Best woman driver I ever saw,” was the senator’s praiseful rejoinder.  “Nothing feazes that little girl, and I’m telling you that she can turn the wheels just about as fast as you want to ride.”

This was a new aspect of Miss Anners, even to one who knew her as well as Blount thought he knew her, and, lover-like, he found a grain of encouragement in it.  Patricia had never cared for the out-of-door things save as they bore upon the hygienic condition of the poor in the great cities.  If she had changed in one respect, she might change in another.

“I’m glad to know that,” he commented.  “She was needing an outlet on that side.  There is a good bit of the Puritan in her—­all work and no play, you know.”

The senator looked out from beneath his shaggy eyebrows.  “Speaking of work; they’re working you pretty hard these days, aren’t they, son?  If you belonged to my generation instead of your own, you wouldn’t be cold-shouldering that young woman out yonder at Wartrace the way you do; not for all the politics that were ever hatched.”

“I have my work to do, and Patricia Anners would be the last person in the world to put obstacles in the way of it,” returned the son gravely.  Then he added:  “I wish I could say as much for other people.”

The boss shot another keen glance across the table.  “Somebody been trying to block you, Evan, boy?” he asked.

Blount met the gaze of the shrewd gray eyes without flinching.

“I don’t know of any good reason why we shouldn’t be entirely frank with each other, dad,” he said, using for the first time since his return to the homeland the old boyhood father-name.  “You know, better than any one else, I think, what the stumbling-blocks are, and who is putting them in my way.”