Shirley hung her head.
"Yes," he went on fiercely, "a woman who must have her due; it was up to me to be something more than merely honest. Anybody could be honest, she told me, but not everybody could be great!"
Shirley ventured to look up at him, but meeting his gaze fixed on her face, she shifted her eyes instantly.
"Then there was the United States senatorship,—the fairest office in the State,—which I knew I could buy with the money for which I had sold my soul. Again and again I came into this office and went to that vault there, determined to break the seals of the covers on those boxes—to buy the United States senatorship. But I could not bring myself to do it. Something always said to me: 'YOU MUST DO WITHOUT IT! YOU MUST BE HONEST! YOU MUST MAKE A CLEAN FIGHT!' Yet, still, I was a thief: holding thousands that didn't belong to me. But always upon me was that all-absorbing passion,—a passion, not to use, but to do without the thing which was at my finger's ends,—an incentive without which I could not succeed. And so," he concluded, "I went in and won without it."
A tense silence followed the prosecutor's amazingly frank revelation of his temptation and the success which he extorted from it. Unconsciously, he assumed an attitude which it would not be unfair to describe as a defensive one, in readiness, as it were, for any possible strictures on his conduct. Nothing of the sort, however, was forthcoming. On the contrary, at least, as far as Mrs. Challoner was concerned, at no time, not even when his self-arraignment had been the most severe, had his terrible words succeeded in driving the happy light from her eyes. There were moments, it is true, when a dull pallour had spread over her features, a pallour, however, caused solely by sudden stings of agonising memories, and those soft brown eyes had been raised to his questioningly; but his personality had ever been more or less baffling and mysterious to her; and so, whether semi-fascinated or not, they left him thoroughly satisfied with their scrutiny.
Probably better than any one present, Challoner realised to the full what Murgatroyd had suffered. Manlike, however, he was more than willing to permit the great work that Murgatroyd had done to overshadow completely his questionable proceedings. Of course, Challoner was quite well aware that the prosecutor's actions viewed in the light of a successful campaign wore an entirely different aspect than they would had he failed to obtain the senatorship. In the latter case it was inevitable, no matter what moral satisfaction he could derive from the return of the money,—and in fairness to Challoner be it said that he never once questioned it,—that in addition to the humiliation of a ruined career, the prosecutor would have to endure the mortification of knowing that his loss of self-respect was wholly futile. But in any event, Challoner was too generous not to accept without reservation Murgatroyd's contention that, at least in part, he was actuated by a praiseworthy desire to save his wife and him from the results of his dissipations. To a man, such as Challoner now was, it can easily be imagined, therefore, that he would regard that alone as sufficient reason to overlook everything else, and so rising, he grabbed impulsively Murgatroyd's hand, saying:—
"Not another word, old man! It's all right!"
Murgatroyd was visibly affected.
"Thank you," he said simply; and then added: "Only one thing more remains to be done. Mrs. Challoner, I must ask you to break these seals."
Miriam demurred.