Thus it was that, at the cost of a brief interim of fruitless rioting, the Machine had its way. Over the hopeless protests and bitter denunciations of the tricked minority the empty form of choosing the Committee on Credentials was carried through. As a foreseen result, Standish had but six members on the committee, three from Wills and three from Matawan, while from the Conover faction eighteen were to sit in judgment upon the merits of their own cause.
The contest was over. The Standish delegates offered but a perfunctory opposition to the work of choosing the Committees on Organization and Platform. This much having been done, the convention took the usual recess, leaving the committees to go into session in separate rooms back of the stage.
The delegates filed out, the men from Wills and Matawan angry and silent in their shamed defeat, those from the six victorious counties crowing exuberant glee at their easy triumph.
The adjournment announced, Clive slipped out of the Convention Hall by a rear entrance, and went across to his private office at the League rooms. He wanted to be alone—away from even the staunchest friends—in this black hour. Against all counsel and experience, against hope itself, he had hoped to the last. His bulldog pluck, his faith in his mission, had upheld him above colder, saner reason. Even the repeated warnings of Ansel had left him unconvinced. Up to the very moment Conover’s final successful move was made Standish had hoped. And now hope was dead.
He was beaten. Hopelessly, utterly, starkly beaten. From the outset Conover had played with him and his plans, as a giant might play with a child. It had been no question of open battle, with the weaker antagonist battered to earth by the greater strength of his foe. Far worse, the whole campaign had been a futile struggle of an enmeshed captive to break through a web too mighty for his puny efforts, while his conqueror had sat calmly by, awaiting a victory that was as sure as the rise of the sun.
Standish knew that in a few minutes he would be able to pull himself together and face the world as a man should. In the interim, with the hurt animal’s instinct, he wanted to be alone.
Save for a clerk in the antechamber, the League’s rooms were deserted. Everyone was at the convention. The clerk rose at Clive’s entrance and would have spoken, but the defeated candidate passed unheeding into his own office, closing the door behind him.
Then, stopping short, his back to the closed door, he stared, unbelieving, at someone who rose at his entrance and hurried forward, hands outstretched, to greet him.
“I knew you would come here!” said Anice Lanier. “I felt you would, so I hurried over as soon as they adjourned. Aren’t you glad to see me?”
He still stared, speechless, dumbfounded. She had caught his unresponsive hands, and was looking up into his tired, hopeless eyes with a wealth of pity and sympathy that broke through the mask of blank misery on his face, and softened the hard lines of mouth and jaw into a shadow of a smile.