“You were on the road that leads here,” insisted Arkwright with much heat.

“I repeat I was simply taking a walk,” insisted Craig.  He had not once looked at Margaret.

“No matter,” said Margaret in her calm, distant way.  “You may take him away, Grant.  And”—­here she suddenly looked at Craig, a cold, haughty glance that seemed to tear open an abysmal gulf between them—­“I do not wish to see you again.  I am done with you.  I have been on the verge of telling you so many times of late.”

“Is that what you sent Grant after me to tell me?”

“No,” answered she.  “I sent him on an impulse to save the engagement.  But while he was gone it suddenly came over me that you were right—­entirely right.  I accept your decision.  You’re afraid to marry me because of your political future.  I’m afraid to marry you because of my stomach.  You—­nauseate me.  I’ve been under some kind of hideous spell.  I’m free of it now.  I see you as you are.  I am ashamed of myself.”

“I thought so!  I knew it would come!” exclaimed Arkwright triumphantly.

Craig, who had been standing like a stock, suddenly sprang into action.  He seized Arkwright by the throat and bore him to the ground.  “I’ve got to kill something,” he yelled.  “Why not you?”

This unexpected and vulgar happening completely upset Margaret’s pride and demolished her dignified pose.  She gazed in horror at the two men struggling, brute-like, upon the grass.  Her refined education had made no provision for such an emergency.  She rushed forward, seized Craig by the shoulders.  “Get up!” she cried contemptuously, and she dragged him to his feet.  She shook him fiercely.  “Now get out of here; and don’t you dare come back!”

Craig laughed loudly.  A shrewd onlooker might have suspected from his expression that he had deliberately created a diversion of confusion, and was congratulating himself upon its success.  “Get out?” cried he.  “Not I. I go where I please and stay as long as I please.”

Arkwright was seated upon the grass, readjusting his collar and tie.  “What a rotten coward you are!” he said to Craig, “to take me off guard like that.”

“It was a low trick,” admitted Josh, looking down at him genially.  “But I’m so crazy I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Oh, yes, you do; you wanted to show off,” answered Grant.

But Craig had turned to Margaret again.  “Read that,” he commanded, and thrust a newspaper clipping into her hand.  It was from one of the newspapers of his home town—­a paper of his own party, but unfriendly to him.  It read: 

“Josh Craig’s many friends here will be glad to hear that he is catching on down East.  With his Government job as a stepping-stone he has sprung into what he used to call plutocratic society in Washington, and is about to marry a young lady who is in the very front of the push.  He will retire from politics, from head-hunting among the plutocrats, and will soon be a plutocrat and a palace-dweller himself.  Success to you, Joshua.  The ‘pee-pul’ have lost a friend—­in the usual way.  As for us, we’ve got the right to say, ‘I told you so,’ but we’ll be good and refrain.”