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the nickname he has used ever since she was Elizabeth Henry, fellow student at the University of Illinois, so many years ago, “it is the only possible mood in which to approach an acceptance speech. Particularly,” he adds, looking less cheerful, “when you don’t know whether your running mate is going to go along with you or not.”
    “Do you really have doubts?” she asks, coming forward to the mirror and leaning forward to adjust the off-the-face white hat she has chosen to go with the sensible green dress and comfortable white pumps she is wearing for this auspicious occasion. Their eyes meet as he replies thoughtfully.
    “I wouldn’t say I was entirely confident. Although he did promise me last night that he will absolutely, completely, unequivocally, cross-his-heart-and-hope-to-die repudiate NAWAC, the violent, the Communists and all their sleazy vicious doings.”
    “The question,” she says with an equal thoughtfulness, sitting on the bed and studying the problem, “is whether they will repudiate him. And if they don’t, what they will do to you.”
    “They will go along with me,” he says crisply, “as long as Ted is at my side.”
    “And if he shouldn’t be—?” She gives him a quizzical look and he responds with one surprised and skeptical.
    “Why won’t he?” he asks. “Knowing Ted Jason, I don’t believe he’s going to give up his position ‘one heartbeat away,’ etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. After all, if I’m not very successful in the next four years, I might not seek—or win—a second term. And he’s still young enough so that either way he’d be set to be the next nominee. He may make a few noises now and then just to show he’s still really a stout and independent fellow, but I suspect for the most part he’ll stick pretty close to stodgy old reactionary Orrin. Which, after all, is exactly what I want him to do. I need him. By the same token, he needs me. That’s why we’re together, and, I expect, are going to stay together.”
    “I think you will intend to,” she agrees, still thoughtfully. He takes her up on it sharply.
    “Then why won’t we?”
    “You may not,” she says quietly, “be the only people involved, you know. Communists and the violent don’t always go away just because people say they should. Sometimes they have purposes more involved than we simple souls can believe.”
    “But what would be the point in killing him, if that’s what you mean?”
    “There wouldn’t be any point in killing him,” she agrees with a certain wry bluntness. “I agree with you, why should anybody kill him?”
    “Hank,” he says calmly, “I am not going to start worrying at this late date about anyone killing me. I know some have wanted to, I know some still may; but the great majority are satisfied to have him on the ticket and in a position to become heir apparent—”
    “He is the heir apparent,” she interrupts with a sudden sharpness of her own. “Watch out for yourself.”
    “I won’t believe,” he says firmly, “that Ted Jason would be, or could be, party to any attempt on my life.”
    “Any more than he was party to an attempt on Crystal’s,” she remarks quietly. “Nonetheless, it happened.”
    “You and I,” he says with equal quietness, “have faced the possibility of assassination ever since I entered public life. It’s true, the chances are greater now, the occurrence being a thing that feeds on itself in a world of kooks and crazies—”
    “Not always kooks,” she says, “and not always crazies. Sometimes very cold-blooded and very calculating people who know exactly what they’re doing. It seems to me you’re a sitting duck for someone like that.”
    “So what would you have me do at this late date?” he demands. “Quit? Say, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean I want to be President, include me out, I’m going home’? Don’t be silly, Hank. You’re talking like a scared old lady now, not like the next behind-the-scenes