it. He is my husband. I love him. Perhaps he may need me some dark night in life. Who knows? If he calls, I will be ready."
The year had proved a trying one to Ruth. The sensation of the completion of the Temple and the stir made by its dedication had increased Gordon's fame, and the story of her sorrow had been repeated again and again. A hundred petty details, utterly false, had been added as the story had passed from paper to paper, until she was afraid to look in a public print lest she find her own name staring her in the face. From the Socialist point of view, she was attacked as a blatant scold who had made her husband's life intolerable, until he had been rescued by the beautiful woman who was now his wife. By the conservative press, she was timidly defended, damned by faint praise and humiliated by pity.
The children, growing rapidly, were beginning to feel the mother's position. In the public schools, the story of her life and desertion by her husband had tipped the tongues of the spiteful with poison, and Lucy had come home more than once trying to conceal from her mother the hurt of her sensitive child's soul.
Morris King, now the distinguished Governor-elect, hastened to press his suit.
Her faithful knight, he was now laying lovingly at her feet the tribute of a powerful man's life.
To every worldly view of her position and future his suit was a temptation well nigh resistless. His
