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HE girl slipped into the shadow of a tree just beyond the crowd and listened, smiling appreciatively as she thought how disconcerted "the eloquent young candidate" would be to know that she was there. He was emitting burning words about the wickedness of the corporations, and her father was president or director of a score of the most conspicuous.
The speaker's efforts to convince the people that he was one of them, despite well-known handicaps of birth and inheritance, appealed to her as too delicious to keep to herself. The money enabling him to fight corporate wealth happened to have been inherited from a corporation. But the anticipated relish of mimicking him at home burned out in a blush as she suddenly realized that this would involve acknowledging that she had taken the trouble to go and hear him—a thing she did not care to proclaim. Perhaps the blush showed the real reason for this secret expedition.
Abstractly he was absurd, as represented by the papers (controlled by her father), but concretely he looked very nice as he stood up there with the flaring light overhead casting deep, interesting shadows upon his clean-cut face while he forgot himself in the vehemence with which he swayed the silent crowd before him.
Davidge, unaware of Miss Hallowell's proximity, presently caught a glimpse of the familiar figure of the Hallowells' butler, he being her escort, and his figure being of a sort inconvenient to hide in the shadow of middle-aged trees—hardly an æsthetic sight, but the orator sweeping grandly on to his peroration experienced the usual leap of the heart occasioned by the presence of anybody or anything even remotely associated with her. Subconsciously he kept wondering what the deuce old Gray might be doing in this remote edge of a dirty town miles away from the Hallowells' place at an hour usually claimed by the Hallowells' dinner.
As a lover, Davidge was grimly grateful that even this member of the household cared to come and hear him talk. As a politician he reminded himself that a servant's opinion counts as much as his master's at the polls—more, incidentally, than his mistress's—and resolved to seek out Gray at the conclusion of the speech to thank him for his interest.
So the girl behind the tree was caught.
"Nell!" he exclaimed with a burst of delight; "how sweet of you!" The vote was forgotten; he had her hand in his, he was making obeisance over it. The crowd was still cheering his name; he did not hear it.
"Oh, you needn't think it was because I admire you," she said, smiling easily. She withdrew her hand and retreated a little from him.
"I don't," he said in a lower tone; "but you came!" His voice was vibrant from speaking, his eye flashing, his atmosphere dominant.
"Oh," said the girl in an indolent manner, "I was just passing by this way."
"But you stopped!"
"I couldn't get through this crowd of yours with the machine. We haven't all had your experience in getting around the 'peopul,' Tom."
He laughed applaudingly at that. "You could have gone around the block, you know—if you'd wanted to." He drove his gaze down into her eyes, which fluttered like cowards and sought the shadow.
"Not with a broken-down machine," she returned glibly. "I had to put in the time somehow. You're not much of a speaker; are you?"
He paid no attention to the last. "Broken down?" he asked, a sudden plan coming into the back of his head. Politicians learn to see opportunities quickly.
"It's all right now."
"Oh!" he sighed, disappointed. Then looking sceptically at the fat, incompetent house servant, "Who fixed it?" he asked.
He kept demolishing her defences. Safety lay in flight. "Perhaps you'll be convinced that it's fixed if you'll take the trouble to get it for me," she answered. "I'm late enough as it is." He kept on gazing quizzically at Gray as she pointed down the dark side-street where the automobile stood. "But it would take him forever," she whispered, smiling, "to get through this crowd of yours."
"That's what I was counting on, Nell," he muttered and started off in the direction she pointed, adding, "I suppose you saw that."
She did see it; she felt it, too; her breast was thumping with it—another reason for her panicky desire to be rid of him.
She watched him as the crowd parted before him, some of them turning to point him out, to gaze after the hero, as he brushed by, ignoring their adulation. She had come here to be amused. … So she smiled satirically.