This condition was soon brought about, and I entered into my new relations with him under the most favorable circumstances.
If I had readily acquiesced he would have assumed the air of favoring me, as it was, the rule was reversed.
He was overwhelmingly nominated and re-elected, and for the result he generously gave me full credit.
I was now well within the charmed circle, and within easy reach of my further desire to have no rivals. This came about naturally and without friction.
The interests, of course, were soon groveling at my feet, and, heavy as my demands were, I sometimes wondered like Clive at my own moderation.
The rest of my story is known to you. I had tightened a nearly invisible coil around the people, which held them fast, while the interests despoiled them. We overdid it, and you came with the conscience of the great majority of the American people back of you, and swung the Nation again into the moorings intended by the Fathers of the Republic.
When Selwyn had finished, the fire had burned low, and it was only now and then that his face was lighted by the flickering flames revealing a sadness that few had ever seen there before.
Perhaps he saw in the dying embers something typical of his life as it now was. Perhaps he longed to recall his youth and with it the strength, the nervous force and the tireless thought that he had used to make himself what he was.
When life is so nearly spilled as his, things are measured differently, and what looms large in the beginning becomes but the merest shadow when the race has been run.
As he contemplated the silent figure, Philip Dru felt something of regret himself, for he now knew the groundwork of the man, and he was sure that under other conditions, a career could have been wrought more splendid than that of any of his fellows.