“You’ve done a very great deal, Rhoda,” he said. “I’m not questioning the number or the brightness of the candles you’ve burned in my game. I’m only questioning the value of the game itself. Power’s like money. If you give up all else to possess it, then it possesses you.”
“But——”
“I know. I should have chosen long ago. I’m not turning back now. I owe you that, I think. If I’m anything at all beyond a struggling lawyer in a little city——” He broke off suddenly as the young servant came to the library curtains.
“Senator Manning and two other gentlemen,” he announced.
They came almost on his heels, three men with the aspect of dignitaries: Manning tall, thin, almost cadaverous, with the eye and the hand of a Richelieu; Wilk heavy, ponderous, inscrutable as a great Buddha; Laflin, a blend of college professor and Wall Street lawyer, hiding a predatory keenness behind horn-rimmed spectacles. Characteristically, Stroude felt, they fell into place, Wilk into the nearest easy chair, Manning into an Italian seat which put him in the centre of a softly lighted stage, and Laflin back in the shadows. After a moment of casual conversation Rhoda rose to leave them. Stroude halted her. “I have an idea,” he said, “that these gentlemen have come to me on an errand which concerns you as well as myself.—Do you mind if she stays?”
“Not at all,” said Manning suavely. Laflin nodded, and old man Wilk grunted assent. Rhoda went over beyond Laflin as far outside the group as she could, and just out of her husband’s line of vision; but he turned his chair a little, that he might encompass her in his sight as Manning began to speak.
“It makes it a little easier for us,” he said, “that you have guessed something of our mission.”
“I couldn’t help knowing,” Stroude swung back, “when every other man in the Senate has known it for days.”
“Not definitely,” boomed Wilk. “There’s always talk, of course, and often more smoke than fire.”
“Sometimes it’s only a screen for the protection of a real issue,” Manning went on, “but in this case the fire is burning. You know, I am sure, that the conference to determine the best candidate for the next term of the presidency is to be held here in Washington to-morrow.”