For answer he struck himself desperately across the forehead with the palm of his hand.
“What is it,” I asked, “that your mother wants you not to do?”
“She wants me to give up Trimmer—to refuse to make the nominating speech for him to-morrow.”
“You've got to give him up!” cried his mother; and then went on with reiterations as passionate as they were weak and broken in utterance. “You can't make the speech, you can't do it, you can't—”
“Then I'm done for!” he said. “Don't you see what a frightful blow this pitiful, drunken folly of poor Joe's has dealt Trimmer's candidaoy? Don't you see that they rely on me more than ever, now? Are you so blind you don't see that I am the only man who can save Trimmer the nomination? If I go back on him now, he's done for and I'm done for with him! It's my only chance!”
“No, no,” she sobbed, “you'll have other chances; you'll have plenty of chances, dear; you're young—”
“My only chance,” he went on rapidly, ignoring her, “and if I can carry it through, it will mean everything to me. The tide's running strong against Trimmer to-night, and I am the only man in the world who can turn it the other way. If I go into the convention for him, faithful to him, and, out of the highest sense of justice, explain that, even though Lane has been my closest friend, he was in the wrong and that—”
Mary rose to her feet and went to her son and clung to him. “No, no!” she cried; “no, no!”
“I've got to!” he said.
“What is that you must do, Hector?” It was Miss Rainey's voice, and came from just behind me. She was standing in the doorway that led from the hall, and her eyes were glowing with a brilliant, warm light. We all started as she spoke, and I sprang up and turned toward her.