audience filed out he went into a nearby florist and bought the entire stock of Killarney roses. He carried them to her dressing-room, and when the maid admitted him, he dropped the mass in her lap.

"For a wild Irish rose," said he.

"Faith, little sisters, he's an Irishman himself," she laughed, burying her face in the bloom.

They were interrupted by the manager, people to see her on various pretexts. Trent was driven into the ugly corridor. He was for the first time somewhat irritated by the situation. Appendage to a star! Had he for once in his carefully planned life completely lost his head, and risked everything on a wild gamble? When she came toward him, ready for the street, he pulled himself together.

"Where shall we go? Do you mind the cafés?"

"People stare so, I seldom go. But it is all right to-night, if you do not mind that."

"Let's go to the Persian Garden and dance."

"All right."

Trent had never been in any public place with her, and he was totally unprepared for the effect she produced. As they followed the head waiter to a table, a noticeable whisper ran round the room, then silence. Then a youth, who had courage as well as champagne aboard, rose and lifted his glass.

"On your feet, all of you! To Bob, God bless her!"

With laughter everybody responded. Trent, slightly amused, secretly annoyed, watched Bob's expression. First astonishment, then concern for him, then genuine pleasure. They were not yet seated, so she lifted an imaginary glass to them.

"Thank you, friends. Here's to a short life and a merry one for us all!"

Applause greeted her, and as they took their seats she turned to Trent impulsively.

"I'm so sorry," she said; "you hate it, of course, but don't. It's only because they really love me."

"Suppose we don't try to explain things to each other, my lady."

The music began, and he rose and held out his hand to her. She had not danced with him before, so when he swung her away with the ease of a master, she had a sense of surprised pleasure before she gave herself up to the joy of it.

"I'd never have thought it of you, Paul," she said, as they took their seats. He laughed and lifted his glass.

"To the partnership!"

They drank to it gravely. Later when Paul unlocked her door for her, and turned to go on to his, she said: "Come in and talk over the party."

"Aren't you tired?"

"No. I feel as if I'd never sleep. I wish I were going on this minute, to play a new part before a Boston audience, on a rainy first night."

"That would call forth all your powers," he laughed, and followed her in. As she pulled the cord of the last lamp, she felt his eyes on her.

"Well, what do you think of me?" she challenged him.

"I think you are an inspired artist and a beautiful woman," he evaded.

She laughed at that.

"That must be an old joke," he objected.

"The whole thing is exquisitely funny: a strange man in my rooms at two in the morning compliments me on my art.... What do you want of life?" she added disconcertingly.

His tongue shaped itself in an evasive reply, but the frank, boyish interest in her face changed his mind.

"I want several things: One of them is to be governor of New York."

"Good! I like people to know what they want and go after it."

"It isn't so easy, you know."

"All the better."

"Do you know anything about politics?"

"Lord, man, I'm Irish."

She led him on to talk of the situation in the political game, to line up for her his allies and enemies; to outline his campaign policy. His candidacy was to be announced in a few days. She leapt at the points in advance of him, questioned this and that—he talked to her as to a lieutenant. The clock chimed and caught his attention.

"Good heavens! why didn't you send me home?"

"What's the use of sleeping when there's something to talk about—when there's a fight to plan for."

"But my work must not interfere with your work." He came to shake hands with her. "It looks as if this partnership might prove a success."

"I'm no prophet!" she defied him.

Just before he closed the door he spoke:

"But the election would not be until next fall——"

"We could extend our contract," she retorted, and the door closed on his laugh.

PART II

It seems sometimes as if a Harlequin rules the world. When once your tired eyes rest on what you know to be the last trick in his bag—lo! he turns the empty sack upside down, and it spills surprises, like the widow's cruse. Some such master jest he played on Barbara.

An absorbing interest had catapulted into her life, and wakened her like a bugle call. She had a fight on her hands and that means life to the Irish. Her extraordinary marriage made little real difference in the order of her days, except that she dined with an interesting man each night. He talked to her of the things he hoped to do, if the people of New York made him governor.

Always, except when political dinners or party caucus kept him too late, she found him pacing the corridor outside her dressing-room. Courteous, urbane, he took her to supper with friends, to a café, or back to the hotel, where they had something to eat in Bob's sitting-room. This last arrangement suited her best, for then she could lead him to talk of the fight ahead. He sometimes asked her judgment. She felt his single-purposed strength in these talks; she plumbed the force which had made him a success at forty.

"Why do you always make me talk about myself?" he asked her on one of these occasions of supper in her room.

"I want you to be interested," she retorted.

"You think me such an egotist?"

"I think all successful people are egotists. Success isn't an accident, it is plan and work. You have to focus in on yourself all the time to belong to the master-class."

"You don't talk about yourself—you're a success."

"Oh, we'll come to me. It's all 'quiet along the Potomac' with me just now, but you're going into action."

"Think of the egotists who are not a success."

"Well, of course, a man who is merely in love with himself is in danger of a mésalliance," she added, laughing.

"Go on! What is the saving grace for your egotists?"

"I hate to be so bromidic."

"I'm used to it."

"Oh!"

"Not in you—the rest of the world."

"New York nearly lost a governor!" she warned him. "I save my egotist with a sense of humour, which is only a sense of proportion. Humour plus purpose."

"What kind of purpose?"

"To be selfish for unselfish ends."

"Delightfully Irish," he admitted.

The talk never drifted from the impersonal. They both unconsciously fought to keep up all the barriers of their formal relationship, but they both were constantly peering over the wall into the other's personality, hoping not to be caught at it.

The day came when Trent's candidacy for governor was announced by his party. As he never saw Bob in the morning, the news came to her with her coffee and toast. She sent for all the papers and read them more diligently than she had ever searched for notices of her own triumphs. The bed looked like a sea