That was all that was
asked of him--to shift back the paper's position to where he had placed
it in the beginning, and by so doing to save the party from wreck. Could
a sensible man hesitate an instant? And in return....
West's gaze wandered out of the window, and far on into the beyond....
His friends were watching him, silently but fearfully. Who and what
these friends were his swift thought did not stay to ask. His glamorous
fancy saw them as a great anxious throng, dominant men, yet respectful,
who were trembling lest he should make a fatal step--to answer for it
with his political life. Public life--he rejected the term political
life--was of all things what he was preeminently fitted for. How else
could a man so fully serve his fellows?--how so surely and strongly
promote the uplift? And Plonny Neal had served notice on him that he
stood to-day on the crossroads to large public usefulness. The czar of
them all, the great Warwick who made and unmade kings by the lifting of
his finger, had told him, as plain as language could speak, that he,
West, was his imperial choice for the mayoralty, with all that that
foreshadowed.
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