"No, I dare say you didn’t, but I can’t honorably stand by you, Huber, now that you’ve openly taken this line."
Nelson swallowed hard. It was plain that he did not like the dish prepared for him.
"I don’t understand," said Luke. "If it was true, and if we’re to make a real fight for real reform, we’ve got to begin at the cause of corruption."
"I know. I admit it was the truth, but it wasn’t the whole truth. He does lots of good."
"Good and bad are relative. Relatively he doesn’t do any good."
"Yes, but there’s the League to think of."
"Of course it did, but you’re not the whole ticket nor the whole movement."
This was a detail that Luke in his triumph had forgotten.
"Still," he said, "we can’t dodge the facts. I won’t dodge them, Nelson."
"I understand," Nelson said. "Perhaps you’re right. Anyhow, right or wrong, you’ve done what you’ve done, and so I’ve got to go."
"I may as well tell you," he at last said. "You know my business has always been one that didn’t cross these fellows’ trail. But lately they’ve been coming toward us. I think I mentioned that?"
"Well, I’ve been hard up. The other day I needed money badly. I had to have money or I’d have failed. I have a wife and family to think of, Huber. I tried everywhere to raise the wind, and there was only one place where I could raise it."
"You mean—" Luke wet his lips. "You mean that crowd?"
"It came direct from L. Bergen Rivington. But, of course, it really came from _him_."
"I wasn’t bought, Huber," he said. "You don’t think that?"
"I wish I’d told you sooner, Huber. I didn’t expect you’d go so far."
"I’d have gone just as far, Nelson. I’m sorry."
§10. "Betty," said Luke, as the girl nestled against him in the darkness of the cab that drove them toward her home, "this is going to be a hard battle."
"I don’t care whether you win or not," she whispered, "so long as you ought to win."
§11. Forbes was waiting for them in the library. His rapidly-graying hair was disordered, and his face was even more worried than Nelson’s had been.
"You’d better run to bed, dear," he said to Betty as he kissed her. "It’s late, and I’ve some heavy business to talk about to Luke."
"I’m wide awake," protested Betty. "I couldn’t sleep if I did go to bed. I’ll sleep late to-morrow."