“What on earth have you been thinking of then?”

The Governor rose, with a gesture toward the window, through which, below the slope of the Capitol grounds, the roofs and steeples of the city spread their smoky mass to the mild air.

“Of all that is left,” he said.  “Of everything except Fleetwood and myself.”

“Ah—­” Shackwell murmured.

Mornway turned back and sank into his seat.  “Don’t you see that was all I had to turn to?  The State—­the country—­it’s big enough, in all conscience, to fill a good deal of a void!  My own walls had grown too cramped for me, so I just stepped outside.  You have no idea how it simplified matters at once.  All I had to do was to say to myself:  ‘Go ahead, and do the best you can for the country.’  The personal issue simply didn’t exist.”

“Yes—­and then?”

“Then I turned over for three days this question of the Attorney-Generalship.  I couldn’t see that it was changed—­how should myfeelings have affected it?  Fleetwood hasn’t betrayed the State.  There isn’t a scar on his public record—­he is still the best man for the place.  My business is to appoint the best man I can find, and I can’t find any one as good as Fleetwood.”

“But—­but—­your wife?” Shackwell stammered.

The Governor looked up with surprise.  Shackwell could almost have sworn that he had indeed forgotten the private issue.

“My wife is ready to face the consequences,” he said.

Shackwell returned to his former attitude of incredulity.

“But Fleetwood?  Fleetwood has no right to sacrifice—­”

“To sacrifice my wife to the State?  Oh, let us beware of big words.  Fleetwood was inclined to use them at first, but I managed to restore his sense of proportion.  I showed him that our private lives are only a few feet square anyhow, and that really, to breathe freely, one must get out of them into the open.”  He paused and broke out with sudden violence, “My God, Hadley, didn’t you see that Fleetwood had to obey me?”

“Yes—­I see that,” said Shackwell, with reviving obstinacy.  “But if you’ve reached such a height and pulled him up to your side it seems to me that from that standpoint you ought to get an even clearer view of the madness of your position.  You say you have decided to sacrifice your own feelings and your wife’s—­though I’m not so sure of your right to dispose of hervoice in the matter; but what if you sacrifice the party and the State as well, in this transcendental attempt to distinguish between private and public honor?  You’ll have to answer that before you can get me to carry this letter.”

The Governor did not blanch under the attack.

“I think the letter will answer you,” he said calmly.

“The letter?”

“Yes.  It’s something more than a notification of Fleetwood’s reappointment.”  Mornway paused and looked steadily at his friend.  “You’re afraid of an investigation—­an impeachment?  Well, the letter anticipates that.”