He became friendlier to me, solicitous toward spring—but he clung none the less tightly to Goodrich. The full awakening came in his third summer when the press and the politicians of the party began openly to discuss the next year's nomination and to speak of him as if he were out of the running. He was spending the hot months on the Jersey coast, the flatterers still swarming about him and still assiduous, but their flatteries falling upon ever deafer ears as his mind rivetted upon the hair-suspended sword. In early September he invited me to visit him—my first invitation of that kind in two years and a half. We had three interviews before he could nerve himself to brush aside the barriers between him and me.
"I am about to get together my friends with a view to next year," said he through an uneasy smile. "What do you think of the prospects?"
"What do your friends say?" I asked.
"Oh, of course, I am assured of a renomination—" He paused, and his look at me made the confident affirmation a dubious question.
"Yes?" said I.
"And—don't you think my record has made me strong?" he went on nervously.
"Strong—with whom?" said I.
He was silent. Finally he laid his hand on my knee—we were taking the air on the ocean drive. "Harvey," he said, "I can count on you?"
I shook my head. "I shall take no part in the next campaign," I said. "I shall resign the chairmanship."
"But I have selected you as my chairman. I have insisted on you. I can't trust any one else. I need others, I use others, but I trust only you."