Krantz laughed.
"How reform does drop its gentle influence round! Has the fusion movement in Tuscarora converted you?"
"No," Shelby answered. "I've grown."
Krantz looked bewildered, laughed a little, and asked point-blank,
"Shall you come out against us?"
"You'll know in Washington."
"If elected," qualified the man.
"Naturally."
Krantz rang up the porter to ask if his berth were ready, rose, yawned, and shed a benevolent smile.
"From things they're beginning to say about Tuscarora down at headquarters," he remarked impersonally, "I venture to predict that we'll know within twenty-four hours. Good night."
The River and Harbor bogy wove the pattern of Shelby's troubled dreams. In a way, he had grown, as he liked to think, and by this touchstone he knew it best. Whatever his practice, his quickened ideals were loftier than of old, and across the future's broader field, should it be his to till, the man was honestly ambitious to trace a straighter furrow than his ploughshare had ever turned. But his past and the insistent present seemed to hamper every forward step. It was an open secret that the disciplining of the man he hoped to succeed had issued directly from his refusal to stand with his colleagues in this question, and Shelby in his heart approved his course. He did not anticipate that he should meet a like dilemma; the winter session of the old House would doubtless settle the matter, as Krantz had said; but Volney Sprague had harped upon his possible action so incessantly that he could easily see why the organization might wonder at his silence. Was the time for speech, then, so near as this creature warned?