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   :PG.Id: 35727
   :PG.Title: Her Infinite Variety
   :PG.Released: 2011-03-30
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Roger Frank
   :PG.Producer: the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
   :DC.Creator: Brand Whitlock
   :DC.Title: Her Infinite Variety
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1904
   :coverpage: images/cover.jpg
   
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Her Infinite Variety
====================

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   This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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      Title: Her Infinite Variety
      
      Author: Brand Whitlock
      
      Release Date: March 30, 2011 [EBook #35727]
      
      Language: English
      
      Character set encoding: UTF-8

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   | :xl:`HER INFINITE`
   | :xl:`VARIETY`
   |
   | *by*
   |
   | :lg:`BRAND WHITLOCK`
   | Author of “The 13th District”
   |
   | WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
   | HOWARD CHANDLER CHRISTY
   |
   | Decorations by
   | Ralph Fletcher Seymour

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   :align: center

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   | NEW YORK
   | A. L. BURT COMPANY
   | PUBLISHERS
   |
   |
   |
   |
   | :small-caps:`Copyright 1904`
   | :small-caps:`The Bobbs-Merrill Company`
   |
   | :small-caps:`January`
   |
   |
   |
   |
   | *To* My Mother

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   Her Infinite Variety


I
=

:xl:`A`\ MELIA came running eagerly
down the wide stairs, and
though she was smiling with
the joy of Vernon’s coming, she stopped
on the bottom step long enough to
shake out the skirt of the new spring
gown she wore, with a manner that
told she had it on that evening for the
first time. Vernon hastened to meet her,
and it was not until he had kissed her
and released her from his embrace that
she saw the dressing-case he had set
down in the hall.

“What’s that for?” she asked in
alarm. Her smile faded suddenly, leaving
her face wholly serious.

“I have to go back to-night,” he
replied, almost guiltily.

“To-night!”

“Yes; I must be in Springfield in
the morning.”

“But what about the dinner?”

“Well,” he began, helplessly, “I
guess you’ll have to get somebody in
my place.”

Amelia stopped and looked at him
in amazement.

“I thought the Senate never met
Mondays until five o’clock in the afternoon?”
she said.

“It doesn’t, usually; but I had a telegram
from Porter an hour ago; there’s
to be a conference in the morning.”

They started toward the drawing-room. Amelia was pouting
in her disappointment.

“I knew something would spoil it,”
she said, fatalistically. And then she
added, presently: “I thought that Monday
afternoon sessions never lasted longer
than a minute. You never went down
before until Monday night.”

“I know, dear,” said Vernon, apologetically,
“but now that the session is
nearing its close, we’re busier than we
have been.”

“Can’t you wire Mr. Porter and get
him to let you off?” she asked.

Vernon laughed.

“He isn’t my master,” he replied.

“Well, he acts like it,” she retorted,
and then as if she had suddenly hit upon
an unanswerable argument she went on:
“If that’s so why do you pay any attention
to his telegram?”

“It isn’t he, dear,” Vernon explained,
“it’s the party. We are to have a very
important conference to consider a situation
that has just arisen. I must not
miss it.”

“Well, it ruins my dinner, that’s
all,” she said, helplessly. “I wanted
you here.”

Vernon had come up from Springfield
as usual for the week’s end adjournment,
and Amelia had counted on his
waiting over, as he always did, for the
Monday night train, before going back
to his duties in the Senate. More than
all, she had counted on him for a dinner
she had arranged for Monday evening.

“What time does your train leave?”
she asked, in the voice of one who succumbs
finally to a hopeless situation.

“Eleven twenty,” he said. “But I
brought my luggage over with me, so I
could start from here at the last minute.
I’ll go over to the Twenty-third Street
station and catch it there.”

Amelia had had the deep chair Vernon
liked so well wheeled into the mellow
circle of the light that fell from a tall
lamp. The lamp gave the only light in
the room, and the room appeared vast
in the dimness; an effect somehow aided
by the chill that was on it, as if the fires
of the Ansley house had been allowed
to die down in an eager pretense of
spring. It was spring, but spring in
Chicago. Sunday morning had been
bright and the lake had sparkled blue
in the warm wind that came up somewhere
from the southwest, but by night
the wind had wheeled around, and the
lake resumed its normal cold and menacing
mood. As Vernon sank into the
chair he caught a narrow glimpse of
the boulevard between the curtains of
the large window; in the brilliant light
of a street lamp he could see a cold rain
slanting down on to the asphalt.

“How much longer is this legislature
to last, anyway?” Amelia demanded, as
she arranged herself in the low chair
before him.

“Three weeks,” Vernon replied.

“Three—weeks—more!” The girl
drew the words out.

“Yes, only three weeks,” said Vernon.
“And then we adjourn *sine die*. The
joint resolution fixes the date for June
second.”

Amelia said nothing. She was usually
disturbed when Vernon began to
speak of his joint resolutions; which
was, perhaps, the reason why he spoke
of them so often.

“Of course,” Vernon went on, with
a certain impression of relief in his
words, “I have another session after
this.”

“When will that be?” Amelia asked.

“Winter after next. The governor,
though, may call a special session to
deal with the revenue question. That
would take us all back there again next
winter.”

“Next winter!” she cried, leaning
over in alarm. “Do you mean you’ll
have to be away all next winter, too!”

The significance of her tone was
sweet to Vernon, and he raised himself
to take her hands in his.

“You could be with me then, dearest,”
he said softly.

“In Springfield!” she exclaimed.

“Why not?” asked Vernon. “Other
members have their wives with them—some
of them,” he qualified, thinking
how few of the members cared to have
their wives with them during the session.

“What could one do in Springfield,
pray?” Amelia demanded. “Go to the
legislative hops, I suppose? And dance
reels with farmers and West Side politicians!”
She almost sniffed her disgust.

“Why, dearest,” Vernon pleaded,
“you do them a great injustice. Some
of them are really of the best people;
the society in Springfield is excellent.
At the governor’s reception at the mansion
the other night—”

“Now, Morley,” Amelia said, with
a smile that was intended to reproach
him mildly for this attempt to impose
upon her credulity.

“And besides,” Vernon hurried on,
suddenly taking a different course with
her, “you could be a great help to me.
I never address the Senate that I don’t
think of you, and wish you were there
to hear me.”

“I should like to hear you,” said
Amelia, softening a little. “But of
course I couldn’t think of appearing in
the Senate.”

“Why not? Ladies often appear
there.”

“Yes, overdressed, no doubt.”

“Well, you wouldn’t have to be overdressed,”
Vernon retorted. He seemed
to have the advantage, but he decided
to forego it. He sank back on the
cushions of his chair, folding his hands
and plainly taking the rest a senator
needs after his legislative labors.

“Of course,” he said, “we needn’t
discuss it now. The governor may not
call the special session. If the party—”
but he paused, thinking how little interested
she was in the party.

“I wish you’d let politics alone,”
Amelia went on relentlessly. “It seems
so—so common. I don’t see what there
is in it to attract you. And how am I
ever going to explain your absence to
those people to-morrow night? Tell
them that *politics* detained you, I suppose?”
She looked at him severely,
and yet triumphantly, as if she had reduced
the problem to an absurdity.

“Why,” said Vernon, “you can tell
them that I was called suddenly to
Springfield; that an important matter
in the Senate—”

“The Senate!” Amelia sneered.

“But dearest,” Vernon began, leaning
over in an attitude for argument.

She cut him short.

“Why, Morley, do you think I’d
ever let on to those Eltons that I *know*
any one in *politics*?”

“Don’t they have politics in New
York?” he asked.

“They won’t even know where
Springfield is!” she went on irrelevantly.

“What’ll they say when they receive
our cards next fall?” he asked with a
smile.

“Well, you needn’t think your name
will be engraved on them as *Senator*, I
can assure you!” Her dark eyes flashed.

Vernon laughed again, and Amelia
went on:

“You can laugh, but I really believe
you would if I’d let you!”

They were silent after that, and
Amelia sat with her elbow on the arm
of her chair, her chin in her hand,
meditating gloomily on her ruined
dinner.

“If you did any good by being in
politics,” she said, as if speaking to
herself. “But I fail to see what good
you do. What good do you do?” She
lifted her head suddenly and challenged
him with a high look.

“Well,” he said, spreading his hands
wide, “of course, if you don’t care
enough to look in the newspapers!”

“But how could I, Morley?” said
Amelia. “How was I to know where
to look?”

“Why, in the Springfield despatches.”

“I began by reading the papers,”
Amelia said. “But, really now, Morley,
you know I couldn’t find anything
in them about you.”

“The most important work in the
legislature isn’t done in the newspapers,”
said Vernon, with a significance
that was intended to hide his inconsistency.
“There are committee meetings,
and conferences and caucuses; it is there
that policies are mapped out and legislation
framed.”

He spoke darkly, as of secret sessions
held at night on the upper floors of
hotels, attended only by those who had
received whispered invitations.

“But if you must be in politics,”
she said, “why don’t you do something
big, something great, something to
make a stir? Show your friends that
you are really accomplishing something!”

Amelia sat erect and gave a strenuous
gesture with one of her little fists
clenched. Her dark eyes showed the
excitement of ambition. But Vernon
drooped and placed his hand wearily to
his brow. Instantly Amelia started up
from her chair.

“Does that light annoy you?” Her
tone was altogether different from her
ambitious one. She was stretching out
a hand toward the lamp, and the white
flesh glowed red between her fingers,
held against the light.

“Never mind,” said Vernon. “It
doesn’t bother me.”

But Amelia rose and twisted the shade
of the lamp about, and then, as she was
taking her seat again, she went on:

“I suppose it’ll be worse than ever
after—after we’re—married.” She faltered,
and blushed, and began making
little pleats in her handkerchief, studying
the effect with a sidewise turn of
her head.

Vernon bent over and took both her
hands in his.

“If it were only Washington!”
There was a new regret in her tone, as
there was in the inclination of her head.

“It shall be Washington, dear,” he
said.

Amelia’s eyelids fell and she blushed
again, even in the glow the lamp
shed upon her face. They were silent
for a moment, and then suddenly she
looked up.

“Washington would be ever so much
better, Morley,” she said. “I should
feel as if that really amounted to something.
We’d know all the diplomats,
and I’m sure in that atmosphere you
would become a great man.”

“I will, dear; I will,” he declared,
“but it will be all for you.”




II
==


:xl:`W`\ HEN Vernon went into the
Senate that Tuesday morning
and saw the red rose lying
on his desk he smiled, and picking
it up, raised it eagerly to his face. But
when he glanced about the chamber
and saw that a rose lay on every other
desk, his smile was suddenly lost in a
stare of amazement. Once or twice,
perhaps, flowers had been placed by
constituents on the desks of certain
senators, but never had a floral distribution,
at once so modest and impartial,
been made before. Several senators,
already in their seats, saw the check
this impartiality gave Vernon’s vanity,
and they laughed. Their laughter was
of a tone with the tinkle of the crystal
prisms of the chandeliers, chiming in
the breeze that came through the open
windows.

The lieutenant-governor was just
ascending to his place. He dropped
his gavel to the sounding-board of his
desk.

“The Senate will be in order,” he
said.

The chaplain rose, and the hum of
voices in the chamber ceased. Then,
while the senators stood with bowed
heads, Vernon saw the card that lay on
the desk beside the rose. Two little
jewels of the moisture that still sparkled
on the rose’s petals shone on the glazed
surface of the card. Vernon read it
where it lay.

“Will the Hon. Morley Vernon
please to wear this rose to-day as a
token of his intention to support and
vote for House Joint Resolution No.
19, proposing an amendment to Section
1, Article VII, of the Constitution?”

The noise in the chamber began again
at the chaplain’s “Amen.”

“New way to buttonhole a man,
eh?” said Vernon to Bull Burns, who
had the seat next Vernon’s. “What’s
it all about, anyway?”

Vernon took up his printed synopsis
of bills and resolutions.

“Oh, yes,” he said, speaking as much
to himself as to Burns; “old man
Ames’s resolution.” Then he turned
to the calendar. There it was—House
Joint Resolution No. 19. He glanced
at Burns again. Burns was fastening
his rose in his buttonhole.

“So you’re for it, eh?” he said.

“To hell with it,” Burns growled in
the gruff voice that spoke for the First
District. In trying to look down at
his own adornment he screwed his fat
neck, fold on fold, into his low collar
and then, with a grunt of satisfaction,
lighted a morning cigar.

“But—” Vernon began, surprises
multiplying. He looked about the
chamber. The secretary was reading
the journal of the preceding day and
the senators were variously occupied,
reading newspapers, writing letters, or
merely smoking; some were gathered
in little groups, talking and laughing.
But they all wore their roses. Vernon
might have concluded that House Joint
Resolution No. 19 was safe, had it not
been for the inconsistency of Burns,
though inconsistency was nothing new
in Burns. Vernon ventured once more
with his neighbor:

“Looks as if the resolution were as
good as adopted, doesn’t it?”

But Burns cast a glance of pity at
him, and then growled in half-humorous
contempt. The action stung Vernon.
Burns seemed to resent his presence
in the Senate as he always resented
the presence of Vernon’s kind in politics.

The rose still lay on Vernon’s desk;
he was the only one of the fifty-one
senators of Illinois that had not put his
rose on. He opened his bill file and
turned up House Joint Resolution No.
19. He read it carefully, as he felt a
senator should before making up his
mind on such an important, even revolutionary
measure. He remembered
that at the time it had been adopted in
the House, every one had laughed; no
one, with the exception of its author,
Doctor Ames, had taken it seriously.

Ames was known to be a crank; he
was referred to as “Doc” Ames, usually
as “Old Doc” Ames. He had introduced
more strange bills and resolutions
than any member at that session; bills
to curb the homeopathists, bills to annihilate
English sparrows, bills to prohibit
cigarettes, bills to curtail the liquor
traffic, and now this resolution providing
for the submission of an amendment
to the Constitution that would extend
the electoral franchise to women.

His other measures had received little
consideration; he never got any of them
out of committee. But on the female
suffrage resolution he had been obdurate,
and when—with a majority so bare
that sick men had to be borne on cots
into the House now and then to pass
its measures—the party had succeeded,
after weeks of agony, in framing an apportionment
bill that satisfied every one,
Doctor Ames had seen his chance. He
had flatly refused to vote for the reapportionment
act unless his woman-suffrage
resolution were first adopted.

It was useless for the party managers
to urge upon him the impossibility of
providing the necessary two-thirds’ vote;
Ames said he could get the remaining
votes from the other side. And so the
steering committee had given the word
to put it through for him. Then the
other side, seeing a chance to place the
majority in an embarrassing attitude before
the people, either as the proponents
or the opponents of such a radical measure—whichever
way it went in the end—had
been glad enough to furnish the
additional votes. The members of the
steering committee had afterward whispered
it about that the resolution was
to die in the Senate. Then every one,
especially the women of Illinois, had
promptly forgotten the measure.

As Vernon thought over it all he
picked up the rose again, then laid it
down, and idly picked up the card.
Turning it over in his hand he saw that
its other side was engraved, and he read:

.. class:: center

   | MARIA BURLEY GREENE
   | :small-caps:`Attorney and Counselor at law`
   | :small-caps:`The Rookery` CHICAGO

Then he knew; it was the work of
the woman lawyer. Vernon had heard
of her often; he had never seen her.
He gave a little sniff of disgust.

The Senate was droning along on
the order of reports from standing committees,
and Vernon, growing tired of
the monotony, rose and sauntered back
to the lobby in search of company more
congenial than that of the gruff Burns.
He carried the rose as he went, raising
it now and then to enjoy its cool petals
and its fragrance. On one of the leather
divans that stretch themselves invitingly
under the tall windows on each side
of the Senate chamber sat a woman,
and about her was a little group of men,
bending deferentially. As he passed
within easy distance one of the men
saw him and beckoned. Vernon went
over to them.

“Miss Greene,” said Senator Martin,
“let me present Senator Vernon, of
Chicago.”

Miss Greene gave him the little hand
that looked yet smaller in its glove of
black *suede*. He bowed low to conceal
a surprise that had sprung incautiously
to his eyes. Instead of the thin, short-haired,
spectacled old maid that had
always, in his mind, typified Maria Burley
Greene, here was a young woman
who apparently conformed to every
fashion, though her beauty and distinction
might have made her independent
of conventions. Physically she was too
nearly perfect to give at once an impression
of aristocracy; but it was her
expression that charmed; it was plain
that her intellectuality was of the higher
degrees.

As Vernon possessed himself he was
able to note that this surprising young
woman was clad in a black traveling
gown that fitted her perfectly. From
her spring hat down to the toes of her
boots there was nothing in her attire
that was mannish, but she was of an
exquisite daintiness wholly feminine
and alluring.

All these superficial things faded into
their proper background when, at last,
his eyes looked full in her face. Reddish
brown hair that doubtless had been
combed into some resemblance to the
prevailing fashion of the pompadour,
had fallen in a natural part on the right
side and lightly swept a brow not too
high, but white and thoughtful. Her
other features—the delicate nose, the
full lips, the perfect teeth, the fine chin—all
were lost in the eyes that looked
frankly at him. As he gazed he was
conscious that he feared to hear her
speak; surely her voice would betray
her masculine quality.

She had seated herself again, and
now made a movement that suggested
a drawing aside of her skirts to make
a place for some one at her side. And
then she spoke.

“Will you sit down, Senator Vernon?”
she said, with a scrupulous regard
for title unusual in a woman. “I must
make a convert of Senator Vernon, you
know,” she smiled on the other men
about her. Her accent implied that
this conversion was of the utmost importance.
The other men, of whom
she seemed to be quite sure, evidently
felt themselves under the compulsion
of withdrawing, and so fell back in reluctant
retreat.




III
===


:xl:`T`\ HE surprise had leaped to Vernon’s
eyes again at the final
impression of perfection made
by her voice, and the surprise changed
to a regret of lost and irreclaimable opportunity
when he reflected that he had
lived for years near this woman lawyer
and yet never had seen her once in all
that time. When Miss Greene turned
to look him in the face again, after the
others were gone, Vernon grew suddenly
bashful, like a big boy. He felt his
face flame hotly. He had been meditating
some drawing-room speech; he
had already turned in his mind a pretty
sentence in which there was a discreet
reference to Portia; Vernon was just at
the age for classical allusions. But when
he saw her blue eyes fixed on him and
read the utter seriousness in them he
knew that compliments would all be
lost.

“I am one of your constituents, Senator
Vernon,” she began, “and I am
down, frankly, lobbying for this resolution.”

“And we both,” he replied, “are, I
believe, members of the Cook County
bar. Strange, isn’t it, that two Chicago
lawyers should have to wait until they
are in Springfield to meet?”

“Not altogether,” she said. “It is
not so very strange—my practice is almost
wholly confined to office work;
I am more of a counselor than a barrister.
I have not often appeared in
court; in fact I prefer not to do so; I
am—well, just a little timid in that
part of the work.”

The femininity of it touched him.
He might have told her that he did
not often appear in court himself, but
he was new enough at the bar to have
to practise the dissimulation of the
young professional man. He indulged
himself in the temptation to allow her
to go undeceived, though with a pang
he remembered that her practice, from
all that he had heard, must be much
more lucrative than his. Something of
the pretty embarrassment she felt before
courts and juries was evidently on her
in this her first appearance in the Senate,
but she put it away; her breast rose
with the deep breath of resolution she
drew, and she straightened to look him
once more in the eyes.

“But about this resolution, Senator
Vernon; I must not take up too much
of your time. If you will give me your
objections to it perhaps I may be able
to explain them away. We should very
much like to have your support.”

Vernon scarcely knew what to reply;
such objections as he might have found
at other times—the old masculine objections
to women’s voting and meddling
in politics—had all disappeared at
sight of this remarkable young woman
who wished to vote herself; he could
not think of one of them, try as he
would. His eyes were on the rose.

“Perhaps your objections are merely
prejudices,” she ventured boldly, in her
eyes a latent twinkle that disturbed him.

“I confess, Miss Greene,” he began,
trying to get back something of his
senatorial dignity, such as state senatorial dignity
is, “that I have not devoted
much thought to the subject; I
am indeed rather ashamed to acknowledge
that I did not even know the
amendment was coming up to-day,
until I was—ah—so delightfully reminded
by your rose.”

He raised the rose to inhale its fragrance.
She made no reply, but she
kept her eyes on him, and her gaze
compelled him to go on. It was hard
for him to go on, for it was now but
a struggle against the formality of a
surrender that had been inevitable from
the beginning. But his man’s pride
forced him to delay it as long as possible.

“What assurances have you from
other senators?” he asked. “Though,
perhaps, I need not ask—they have
unanimously mounted your colors.”
He looked at his colleagues, sporting
their roses. Miss Greene gave a little
exclamation of annoyance.

“Do you think I don’t know,” she
said; “that I don’t understand all that?
I might have known that they would
not take it seriously! And I thought—I
thought—to put the matter so easily
to them that I should be spared the
necessity of buttonholing them!”

“It was a novel way of buttonholing
them,” he laughed.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, catching her
breath, “they wear the roses—and
laugh at me!”

Her eyes flashed through the mists
of vexation that suggested tears.

“You are all alone then?”

Vernon said this in a low, solicitous
tone, as if he were dealing with some
deep grief.

“All alone.”

“And you represent no one—that is,
no society, no club?”

“I am not a paid lobbyist,” she said,
“though I believe it is not beyond the
proprieties of our profession. I do what
I do only from a love of principle. I
represent only my sex.” She said it
impressively, and then with a quick
little laugh that recognized the theatrical
that had been in her attitude, she
added: “And that, I suspect, without
authorization.”

“The ladies, generally, do not seem
to be interested,” Vernon acquiesced.

“No,” she shook her head sadly,
“no, on the contrary, I suppose most
of them oppose the measure.”

“I have generally found them of that
feeling,” Vernon observed.

“The slaves, before the war, often
petitioned congress not to set them
free, you will remember.”

Miss Greene spoke with a bitterness.
Then quickly she collected herself.

“But your objections, Senator Vernon?”
she said. “Really, we must get
down to business.”

She raised the little chatelaine watch
that hung at her bosom and looked
down at it. And then suddenly, without
waiting for his objections, as if she
had quite forgotten them indeed, she impulsively
stretched forth a hand and said:

“You will help me, won’t you?”

Vernon looked into her eyes. His
gaze, after an instant, fell. He tried
to run the stem of the rose through
his buttonhole. The thorns caught in
the cloth.

“You’ll have to do it,” he said, helplessly.

From some mysterious fold of her
habit she took a pin, and then, leaning
over, she pinned the rose to his coat,
pinned it with its long stem hanging,
as a woman would pin a flower to a
man’s lapel.

“Thank you.” He was looking into
her eyes again.

“Rather let me thank *you*,” she said.
“It’s so good of you to vote for my
measure.”

His eyes widened suddenly. He had
quite forgotten the resolution. She must
have perceived this, for she blushed, and
he hastened to make amends.

“I’ll not only vote for it,” he rushed
ahead impulsively, “but I’ll make a
speech for it.” He straightened and
leaned away from her to give a proper
perspective in which she could admire
him. He sat there smiling.

“How splendid of you!” she cried.
“I feel encouraged now.”

Then Vernon’s face lengthened. He
stammered: “But you’ll have to give
me some data; I—I don’t know a thing
about the subject.”

“Oh,” she laughed, “I brought some
literature. It shall all be at your disposal.
And now, I must be about my
work. Can you make any suggestions?
Can you tell me whom I should see,
whom I should interest, who has the—ah—pull,
I believe you call it?”

“I’ll bring them to you,” Vernon
said. “You sit here and hold court.”

He rose and his eyes swept the chamber.
They lighted on Burns, and an
idea suddenly came to him. He would
revenge himself on Burns for all the
slights of the session.

“Of course you’ll have to see Sam
Porter, but I’ll begin by bringing Senator
Burns—familiarly known as Bull
Burns.”

“I’ve read of him so often in the
newspapers,” she said. “It would be
an experience.”

Vernon went over to Burns’s seat and
touched him on the shoulder.

“Come on,” he said in a tone of
command, speaking for once from the
altitude of his social superiority. And
for once he was successful. The burly
fellow from the First District stood up
and looked inquiringly.

“Come with me,” Vernon said;
“there’s a Chicago lawyer back here
who wants to see you.”

Burns followed and an instant later
Vernon halted before Miss Greene. The
other men, who had quickly returned
to her side, made way, and Vernon said:

“Miss Greene, may I present Senator
Burns, of the First District?”

Miss Greene smiled on the big
saloon-keeper, who instantly flamed
with embarrassment. She gave him
her hand, and he took it in his fat
palm, carefully, lest he crush it.

“I am delighted to meet Senator
Burns; I’ve heard of you so often,”
she said, looking up at him. “And do
you know I count it a privilege to meet
one of your acknowledged influence in
our state’s affairs?”

Vernon stood back, delighted beyond
measure with the confusion into which
Burns for once had been betrayed. The
senator from the First District was
struggling for some word to say, and at
last he broke out with:

“Aw now, lady, don’t be t’rowin’
de con into me.”

The men in the little group on that
side of the Senate chamber burst out
in a laugh, but Burns becoming suddenly
grave, and dangerous and terrible
in his gravity, they broke off in the
very midst of their mirth. The group
became silent.

“Really, Senator Burns,” said Miss
Greene, “this is no—ah—confidence
game, I assure you.” She rose with a
graceful sweep of her skirts. Then she
went on: “If you will permit me, I
should like to explain my mission to
you. I am down here to ask the Senate
to adopt a resolution that will submit
an amendment to the Constitution permitting
the women of Illinois to vote
at all elections, as they vote at school
elections now. If you can give it, I
should like your support; I should, at
least, like to tell you my reasons.”

.. image:: images/gs02.jpg
   :align: center

Slowly she seated herself again,
saying: “Will you sit down?”

But Burns only stood and looked at
her. There was a trace of fear in her
face.

“Do *you* want dis resolution put
t’rough?” he asked bluntly.

“I? Indeed I do!” she said.

“Is dere anyt’ing in it fer you?” he
went on.

“Why,” Miss Greene said, somewhat
at a loss, “only that I am interested as a
matter of principle in seeing it adopted.
It would be a great day for me if I
could go back to Chicago feeling that
I had had just a little bit to do with
such a result.”

“Den I’m wit’ you,” said Burns, and
wheeling, he went back to his desk.

Miss Greene watched him a moment,
and then turned to the men, their numbers augmented
now by others who had
come up to see Burns in the presence
of such a woman. The glance she gave
them was a question.

“Oh, he means it,” said Monroe of
Whiteside. “He’ll vote for the resolution.”

“Yes, he’s given his word,” said
Brownell of Cook.

Vernon devoted half an hour to bringing
senators to meet Maria Greene. It
was not difficult work, though it had
its disadvantages; it did not allow Vernon
to remain with her long at a time.
But at last it was done, and he found a
moment alone with her. She had given
him some pamphlets on equal suffrage.

“Ah, if *you* could only address the
Senate!” he exclaimed, in open admiration.
And then, as if an inspiration
had come to him, he added:

“Perhaps I could arrange it; it has
been done.”

She gasped and stretched out her
hand to stay him.

“Oh, not for all the world!” she
protested.

“But you’ll come and meet the lieutenant-governor?”

“Up there?” she said, incredulously,
pointing to the dais under the flags.

“Why, yes,” Vernon answered; “why
not? It’s where all the eminent lawyers
who come down here to lobby sit.”

She looked up at the desk behind
which the lieutenant-governor sat,
swinging gently in his swivel chair,
while the secretary read Senate bills on
third reading. There was a reluctance in
her eyes, but when she caught Vernon’s
smile, she gathered her skirts and said:

“Well, if I must.”




IV
==


:xl:`W`\ HILE Miss Greene sat chatting
with the lieutenant-governor,
who gladly neglected
the duties of his high office,
Vernon went out into the rotunda,
lighted a cigarette, glanced over the
pamphlets, and tried to arrange the
heads of his speech in his mind.

At the thought of the speech,
Vernon grew cold and limp with nervousness.
His hands were clammy, his
knees trembled, his mouth became dry
and parched, and the cigarette he had
lighted imparted all at once an evil
taste. Yet he smoked on, and as he
wandered around the rotunda, men
from both houses, passing to and fro,
greeted him, but they seemed to him
to be strange new creatures flitting by
in a dream. If he was conscious of
them at all it was only as of envied
beings, all on a common happy plane,
fortunate ones who did not have to
make a speech within the hour. He
went over to the state library, thinking
that its quiet would soothe, but when
he stood among the tall stacks of books
he suddenly remembered that he must
not smoke in those precincts; and so he
turned out into the rotunda again, for
he must smoke. He walked round and
round the rotunda, pausing at times to
lean over the brass railing and look far
down to the main floor where the red
light glowed at the cigar stand; he
sauntered back into the dim and undisturbed
corridors, his mind racing
over all the things he might say.

Once or twice he glanced into the
pamphlets Miss Greene had given him,
but he could not fix his mind on them;
their types danced meaninglessly before
his eyes. He was angry with himself
for this nervousness. Why must it
assail him now, just when he wished to
be at his best? He had spoken before,
a hundred times; he knew his audience,
and he had the proper contempt for his
colleagues. He had never, to be sure,
made a set speech in that presence; seldom
did any one do that; the speeches
were usually short and impromptu, and
there was no time for anticipation to
generate nervous dread. And yet his
mind seemed to be extraordinarily clear
just then; it seemed to be able to comprehend
all realms of thought at once.

But it was not so much the speech
he thought of, as the effect of the
speech; already he could see the newspapers
and the big headlines they
would display on their first pages the
next morning; he could see his mother
reading them at breakfast, and then he
could see Amelia reading them. How
her dark eyes would widen, her cheeks
flush pink! She would raise her hand
and put back her hair with that pretty
mannerism of hers; then impulsively
resting her arms on the table before
her, she would eagerly read the long
columns through, while her mother
reminded her that her breakfast was
getting cold. How proud she would
be of him! She would never chide
him again; she would see that at last
he had found himself.

The Eltons, too, would read, and his
absence from their dinner would react
on them impressively. And Maria
Greene—but a confusion arose—Maria
Greene! He had not thought of
Amelia all the morning until that very
instant; Amelia’s letter lay still unopened
on his desk back there in the
Senate chamber. Maria Greene! She
would hear, she would color as she
looked at him, and her eyes would
glow; he could feel the warm pressure
of the hand she would give him in
congratulation.

And it was this handsome young
woman’s presence in the chamber that
gave rise to all this nervousness. He
was sure that he would not have been
nervous if Amelia were to be there.
She had never heard him speak in
public, though he had often pressed her
to do so; somehow the places where he
spoke were never those to which it
would be proper for her to go. She
would wish she had heard this speech,
for in twenty-four hours it would be
the one topic of conversation throughout
the state; his picture would be in
the newspapers—“The brilliant young
Chicago lawyer who electrified the
Illinois Senate with his passionate oratory
and passed the woman-suffrage
measure.” It would be an event to
mark the beginning of a new era—

But his imaginings were broken, his
name was spoken; he turned and saw
Miss Greene.

“Come,” she said. “It’s up! Hurry!”

She was excited and her cheeks
glowed. His teeth began to chatter.
He followed her quick steps in the
direction of the chamber.

“But,” he stammered. “I—I didn’t
know—I haven’t even arranged for
recognition.”

“Oh, I’ve fixed all that!” the woman
said. “The lieutenant-governor promised
me.” She was holding her rustling
skirts and almost running.




V
=


:xl:`A`\ S they entered the Senate chamber,
Vernon heard the
lieutenant-governor say: “And the
question is: Shall the resolution be
adopted? Those in favor will vote
‘aye,’ those opposed will vote ‘no,’
when their names are called; and the
secretary will call the—”

“Mr. President!” Vernon shouted.
There was no time now to retreat; he
had launched himself on the sea of
glory. A dozen other senators were on
their feet, likewise demanding recognition.

“The senator from Cook,” said the
lieutenant-governor.

Vernon stood by his desk, arranging
complacently the documents Miss
Greene had given him. Once or twice
he cleared his throat and wiped his lips
with his handkerchief. The other senators
subsided into their seats, and, seeing
that they themselves were not then
to be permitted to speak, and like all
speakers, not caring to listen to the
speeches of others, they turned philosophically
to the little diversions with
which they whiled away the hours of
the session—writing letters, reading
newspapers, smoking. Vernon glanced
around. Maria Greene was sitting precariously
on the edge of a divan. Her
face was white and drawn. She gave
a quick nod, and a smile just touched
her fixed lips. And then Vernon began.
He spoke slowly and with vast deliberation;
his voice was very low. He
outlined his subject with exquisite pains,
detail by detail, making it clear just
what propositions he would advance.
His manner was that of the lawyer in
an appellate court, making a masterly
and purely legal argument; when it
was done, the Senate, if it had paid
attention—though it seldom did pay
attention—would know all about the
question of woman-suffrage.

In his deliberation, Vernon glanced
now and then at Maria Greene. Her
eyes were sparkling with intelligent interest.
As if to choose the lowest point
possible from which to trace the rise
and progress of legislation favorable to
women, Vernon would call the attention
of the Senate, first, to the decision
of the Illinois Supreme Court *In re*
Bradwell, 55 Ill. 525. That was away
back in 1869, when the age was virtually
dark; and that was the case,
gentlemen would remember, just as if
they all kept each decision of the court
at their tongues’ ends, in which the
court held that no woman could be
admitted, under the laws of Illinois, to
practise as an attorney at law. But,—and
Vernon implored his colleagues to
mark,—long years afterward, the court
of its own motion, entered a *nunc pro
tunc* order, reversing its own decision
in the Bradwell case. Vernon dilated
upon the importance of this decision;
he extolled the court; it had set a white
milestone to mark the progressing
emancipation of the race. Then,
briefly, he proposed to outline for them
the legislative steps by which woman’s
right to equality with man had been
at least partly recognized.

He fumbled for a moment among
the papers on his desk, until he found
one of the pamphlets Miss Greene had
given him, and then he said he wished
to call the Senate’s attention to the
Employment Act of 1872, the Drainage
Act of 1885, and the Sanitary District
Act of 1890. Vernon spoke quite
familiarly of these acts. Furthermore,
gentlemen would, he was sure, instantly
recall the decisions of the courts in
which those acts were under review, as
for instance, in Wilson *vs.* Board of
Trustees, 133 Ill. 443; and in Davenport
*vs.* Drainage Commissioners, 25
Ill. App. 92.

Those among the senators who were
lawyers, as most of them were, looked
up from their letter writing at this, and
nodded profoundly, in order to show
their familiarity with Vernon’s citations,
although, of course, they never
had heard of the cases before.

“This recognition of woman’s natural
right,” Vernon shouted, “this recognition
of her equality with man, can
not be overestimated in importance!”
He shook his head fiercely and struck
his desk with his fist. But then, having
used up all the facts he had marked
in Miss Greene’s pamphlets, he was
forced to become more general in his
remarks, and so he began to celebrate
woman, ecstatically. He conjured for
the senators the presence of their mothers
and sisters, their sweethearts and
wives; and then, some quotations fortunately
occurring to him, he reminded
them that Castiglione had truly said that
“God is seen only through women”;
that “the woman’s soul leadeth us upward
and on.” He recounted the services
of women in time of war, their
deeds in the days of peace, and in the
end he became involved in an allegory
about the exclusion of the roses from
the garden.

The senators had begun to pay attention
to him as soon as he talked about
things they really understood and were
interested in, and now they shouted to
him to go on. It was spread abroad
over the third floor of the State House
that some one was making a big speech
in the Senate, and representatives came
rushing over from the House. The
correspondents of the Chicago newspapers
came over also to see if the
Associated Press man in the Senate was
getting the speech down fully. All the
space on the Senate floor was soon
crowded, and the applause shook the
desks and made the glass prisms on the
chandeliers jingle. The lieutenant-governor
tapped from time to time
with his gavel, but he did it perfunctorily,
as though he enjoyed the applause
himself, as vicariously expressing
his own feelings; his eyes twinkled
until it seemed that, were it not for
certain traditions, he would join in the
delighted laughter that made up most
of the applause.

Once a page came to Vernon with a
glass of water, and as he paused to wipe
his brow and to sip from the glass, he
glanced again at Maria Greene. Her
face was solemn and a wonder was growing
in her eyes. Beside her sat old
“Doc” Ames, scowling fiercely and
stroking his long white beard. There
were sharp cries of “Go on! Go on!”

But Vernon, not accustomed to thinking
on his feet, as talkers love to phrase
it, and having stopped, could not instantly
go on, and that awkward halt
disconcerted him. He was conscious
that the moments were slipping by,
and there were other things—many
other things—that he had intended to
say; but these things evaded him—floated
off, tantalizingly, out of reach.
And so, for refuge, he rushed on to the
conclusion he had half formed in his
mind. The conclusion was made up
mostly from a toast to which he had
once responded while in college, entitled
“The Ladies.” The words came
back to him readily enough; he had
only to apply them a little differently
and to change his figures. Thus it was
easy to work up to a panegyric in which
Illinois stood as a beautiful woman leading
her sister states up to new heights
of peace, of virtue and of concord. He
had a rapt vision of this woman, by her
sweet and gentle influence settling all
disputes and bringing heaven down to
earth at last.

The Senate was in raptures.

“This is the face,” he cried, “‘that
launched a thousand ships and burned
the topless towers of Ilium!' ... 'she
is wholly like in feature to the deathless
goddesses!’” So he went on. “‘Age
can not wither, nor custom stale, her
infinite variety.’”

He was growing weary. He already
showed the impressive exhaustion of the
peroration. He had sacrificed a collar
and drunk all the water from his glass.
He fingered the empty tumbler for a
moment, and then lifted it on high
while he said:

   | “’I filled this cup to one made up
   |   Of loveliness alone,
   | A woman, of her gentle sex
   |   The seeming paragon—
   | Her health! and would on earth there stood
   |   Some more of such a frame,
   | That life might be all poetry,
   |   And weariness a name.’”

When he had done, there was a
moment’s stillness; then came the long
sweep of applause that rang through
the chamber, and while the lieutenant-governor
rapped for order, men crowded
around Vernon and wrung his hand, as
he wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.
And then the roll was called.
It had not proceeded far when there
was that subtile change in the atmosphere which is
so easily recognized by
those who have acquired the sense of
political aeroscepsy; the change that
betokens some new, unexpected and
dangerous manœuver. Braidwood had
come over from the House. His face,
framed in its dark beard, was stern and
serious. He whispered an instant to
Porter, the Senate leader. Porter rose.

“Mr. President,” he said.

The lieutenant-governor was looking
at him expectantly.

“The gentleman from Cook,” the
lieutenant-governor said.

“Mr. President,” said Senator Porter,
“I move you, sir, that the further discussion
of the resolution be postponed
until Wednesday morning, one week
from to-morrow, and that it be made a
special order immediately following
the reading of the journal.”

“If there are no objections it will
be so ordered,” said the lieutenant-governor.

Bull Burns shouted a prompt and
hoarse “Object!”

But the lieutenant-governor calmly
said:

“And it is so ordered.”

The gavel fell.




VI
==


:xl:`A`\ FTER the adjournment Vernon
sought out Maria Greene and
walked with her down Capitol
Avenue toward the hotel. He was prepared
to enjoy her congratulations, but
she was silent for a while, and before
they spoke again “Doc” Ames, striding
rapidly, had caught up with them. He
was still scowling.

“I was sorry you didn’t finish your
speech as you intended, sir,” he said,
with something of the acerbity of a
reproach.

“Why,” began Vernon, looking at
him, “I—”

“You laid out very broad and comprehensive
ground for yourself,” the
old man continued, “but unfortunately
you did not cover it. You should have
developed your subject logically, as I
had hopes, indeed, in the beginning,
you were going to do. An argument
based on principle would have been
more to the point than an appeal to
the passions. I think Miss Greene will
agree with me. I am sorry you did not
acquaint me with your intention of
addressing the Senate on this important
measure; I would very much have liked
to confer with you about what you
were going to say. It is not contemplated
by those in the reform movement
that the charms of woman shall
be advanced as the reason for her right
to equal suffrage with man. It is purely
a matter of cold, abstract justice. Now,
for instance,” the doctor laid his finger
in his palm, and began to speak didactically,
“as I have pointed out to the
House, whatever the power or the
principle that gives to man his right to
make the law that governs him, to
woman it gives the same right. In
thirty-seven states the married mother
has no right to her children; in sixteen
the wife has no right to her own earnings;
in eight she has no separate right
to her property; in seven—”

Vernon looked at Miss Greene helplessly,
but she was nodding her head in
acquiescence to each point the doctor
laid down in his harsh palm with that
long forefinger. Vernon had no chance
to speak until they reached the hotel.
She was to take the midday train back
to Chicago, and Vernon had insisted on
going to the station with her. Just as
she was about to leave him to go up
to her room she said, as on a sudden
impulse:

“Do you know that the women of
America, yes, the people of America,
owe you a debt?”

Vernon assumed a most modest
attitude.

“If we are successful,” she went on,
“the advocates of equal suffrage all
over the United States will be greatly
encouraged; the reform movement
everywhere will receive a genuine impetus.”

“You will be down next Wednesday
when the resolution comes up again,
won’t you?” asked Vernon.

“Indeed, I shall,” she said. “Do you
have any hopes now?”

“Hopes?” laughed Vernon. “Why
certainly; we’ll adopt it. I’ll give my
whole time to it between now and
then. If they don’t adopt that resolution
I’ll block every other piece of
legislation this session, appropriations
and all. I guess that will bring them
to time!”

“You’re very good,” she said. “But
I fear Mr. Porter’s influence.”

“Oh, I’ll take care of him. You
trust it to me. The women will be
voting in this state next year.”

“And you shall be their candidate
for governor!” she cried, clasping her
hands.

Vernon colored; he felt a warm thrill
course through him, but he waved the
nomination aside with his hand. He
was about to say something more, but
he could not think of anything quickly
enough. While he hesitated, Miss
Greene looked at her watch.

“I’ve missed my train,” she said,
quietly.

Vernon grew red with confusion.

“I beg a thousand pardons!” he said.
“It was all my fault and it was certainly
very stupid of me.”

“It’s of no importance. Where must
I go to reserve space on the night
train?” said Miss Greene.

Vernon told her, and proffered his
services. He was now delighted at the
philosophical way in which she accepted
the situation—it would have
brought the average woman, he reflected,
to tears—and then he went on
to picture to himself the practical results
in improving women’s characters
that his new measure, as he had already
come to regard it, would bring about.




VII
===


:xl:`M`\ ARIA GREENE would not
let Vernon attend to her tickets;
she said it was a matter
of principle with her; but late in the
afternoon, when they had had luncheon,
and she had got the tickets herself, she
did accept his invitation to drive. The
afternoon had justified all the morning’s
promise of a fine spring day, and as they
left the edges of the town and turned
into the road that stretched away over
the low undulations of ground they call
hills in Illinois, and lost itself mysteriously
in the country far beyond, Miss
Greene became enthusiastic.

“Isn’t it glorious!” she cried. “And
to think that when I left Chicago last
night it was still winter!” She shuddered,
as if she would shake off the
memory of the city’s ugliness. Her
face was flushed and she inhaled the
sweet air eagerly.

“To be in the country once more!”
she went on.

“Did you ever live in the country?”
Vernon asked.

“Once,” she said, and then after a
grave pause she added: “A long time
ago.”

The road they had turned into was
as soft and as smooth as velvet now that
the spring had released it from the
thrall of winter’s mud. It led beside
a golf links, and the new greens were
already dotted with golfers, who played
with the zest they had accumulated in
the forbidding winter months. They
showed their enthusiasm by playing
bare-armed, as if already it were the
height of summer.

As the buggy rolled noiselessly along,
Vernon and Miss Greene were silent;
the spell of the spring was on them.
To their right rolled the prairies, that
never can become mere fields, however
much they be tilled or fenced. The
brown earth, with its tinge of young
green here and there, or its newly
ploughed clods glistening and steaming
in the sun, rolled away like the sea.
Far off, standing out black and forbidding
against the horizon, they could
see the ugly buildings of a coal shaft;
behind, above the trees that grew for
the city’s shade, the convent lifted its
tower, and above all, the gray dome of
the State House reared itself, dominating the whole
scene. The air shimmered
in the haze of spring. Birds
were chirping in the hedges; now and
then a meadow-lark sprang into the air
and fled, crying out its strange staccato
song as it skimmed the surface of the
prairies. Vernon idly snapped the whip
as he drove along; neither of them
seemed to care to speak. Suddenly they
heard a distant, heavy thud. The earth
trembled slightly.

“What’s that?” said Miss Greene,
in some alarm. “It couldn’t have been
thunder.”

“No,” said Vernon, “it was the
miners, blasting.”

“Where?”

“Down in the ground underneath
us.”

She gave him a strange look which
he did not comprehend. Then she
turned and glanced quickly at the black
breakers of the coal shaft, half a mile
away; then at the golf-players.

“Do the mines run under this
ground?” she asked, sweeping her
hand about and including the links in
her gesture.

“Yes, all over here, or rather under
here,” Vernon said. He was proud of
his knowledge of the locality. He
thought it argued well that a legislator
should be informed on all questions.
Maria thought a moment, then she said:

“The golfers above, the miners
below.”

Vernon looked at her in surprise.
The pleasure of the spring had gone
out of her eyes.

“Drive on, please,” she said.

“There’s no danger,” said Vernon
reassuringly, clucking at his horse, and
the beast flung up its head in a spasmodic
burst of speed, as livery-stable
horses will. The horse did not have
to trot very far to bear them away from
the crack of the golf-balls and the dull
subterranean echoes of the miners’
blasts, but Vernon felt that a cloud had
floated all at once over this first spring
day. The woman sitting there beside
him seemed to withdraw herself to an
infinite distance.

“You love the country?” he asked,
feeling the need of speech.

“Yes,” she said, but she went no
farther.

“And you once lived there?”

“Yes,” she said again, but she vouchsafed
no more. Vernon found a deep
curiosity springing within him; he
longed to know more about this young
woman who in all outward ways seemed
to be just like the women he knew, and
yet was so essentially different from
them. But though he tried, he could
not move her to speak of her own life
or its affairs. At the last he said
boldly:

“Tell me, how did you come to be
a lawyer?”

Miss Greene turned to meet his inquisitive
gaze.

“How did you?” she asked.

Vernon cracked his whip at the road.

“Well—” he stammered. “I don’t
know; I had to do something.”

“So did I,” she replied.

Vernon cut the lazy horse with the
whip, and the horse jerked the buggy
as it made its professional feint at trotting.

“I did not care to lead a useless life,”
he said. “I wanted to do something—to
have some part in the world’s work.
The law seemed to be a respectable
profession and I felt that maybe I could
do some good in politics. I don’t think
the men of my class take as much interest
in politics as they should. And
then, I’d like to make my own living.”

“I have to make mine,” said Maria
Greene.

“But you never thought of teaching,
or nursing, or—well—painting or
music, or that sort of thing, did you?”

“No,” she replied; “did you?”

Vernon laughed at an absurdity that
needed no answering comment, and
then he hastened on:

“Of course, you know I think it
fine that you should have done as you
have. You must have met with discouragements.”

She laughed, and Vernon did not note
the bitterness there was concealed in
the laugh; to him it seemed intended
to express only that polite deprecation
demanded in the treatment of a personal
situation.

“I can sympathize with you there,”
said Vernon, though Miss Greene had
not admitted the need of sympathy.
Perhaps it was Vernon’s own need of
sympathy, or his feeling of the need
of it, that made him confess that his
own family and friends had never sympathized
with him, especially with what
he called his work in politics; he felt,
at any rate, that he had struck the
right note at last, and he went on to
assure her how unusual it was to meet
a woman who understood public questions
as well as she understood them.
And it may have been his curiosity that
led him to inquire:

“How did your people feel about
your taking up the law?”

Miss Greene said that she did not
know how her people felt, and Vernon
again had that baffled sense of her evading
him.

“I’ve felt pretty much alone in my
work,” he said. “The women I know
won’t talk with me about it; they won’t
even read the newspapers. And I’ve
tried so hard to interest them in it!”

Vernon sighed, and he waited for
Miss Greene to sigh with him. He
did not look at her, but he could feel
her presence there close beside him.
Her gloved hands lay quietly in her
lap; she was gazing out over the prairies.
The light winds were faintly stirring
her hair, and the beauty of it,
its warm red tones brought out by the
burnishing sun, suddenly overwhelmed
him. He stirred and his breath came
hard.

“Do you know,” he said, in a new
confidence, “that this has been a great
day for me? To meet you, and to know
you as I think I do know you now!
This morning, when I was speaking, I
felt that with you to help me, I could
do great things.”

Miss Greene drew in her lips, as if
to compress their fullness; she moved
away on the seat, and raised her hand
uneasily and thrust it under her veil to
put back a tress of hair that had strayed
from its fastening. Vernon saw the
flush of her white cheeks come and go.
Her eyebrows were drawn together
wistfully, and in her blue eyes, that
looked far away through the meshes
of her dotted veil, there was a little
cloud of trouble. She caught her lip
delicately between the edges of her teeth.
Vernon leaned slightly forward as if
he would peer into her face. For him
the day had grown suddenly hot, the
spring had developed on the instant the
oppressive heat of summer. He felt its
fire; he could see its intensity vibrating
in the air all about him, and he had
a sense as of all the summer’s voices
droning in unison. The reins drooped
from his listless fingers; the horse
moped along as it pleased.

“I have always felt it, vaguely,” Vernon
went on, his voice dropping to a
low tone, “and this morning it was
suddenly revealed to me—”

Miss Greene raised her hand as if to
draw it across her brow; her veil stopped
her.

“Let’s not talk about that now,” she
pleaded. “Let’s enjoy the air and the
country. I don’t have them often.”
Her hand fell to her lap. The color
had gone out of her cheeks. And Vernon
suddenly felt that the summer had
gone out of the air; a cold wind was
blowing as over soiled patches of snow
left in shaded depressions of the fields;
the earth was brown and bare; the
birds were silent. He jerked the horse
smartly, and it gave an angry toss of its
head, as it broke into its tentative trot.

“I do wish you could know the
women I know,” said Vernon, obviously
breaking a silence. He spoke in
an entirely different voice. “I meant
to put it the other way. I meant that
I wish they could know you, and I
mean that they shall. You would be a
revelation to them.”

Miss Greene smiled, though her face
was now careworn, almost old.

“Right along the line of our constitutional
amendment, now,” he said,
with a briskness, “do you think the
women will become interested?”

“The women of your acquaintance,
or of mine?” asked Miss Greene.

“You’re guying,” said Vernon, and
when Miss Greene seriously protested,
Vernon said he meant all the women,
as politicians pretend to mean all the
people, when they mean only the party.

“I’m afraid not,” she said. “They
could have the ballot to-morrow if
they’d only ask for it. The trouble is
they don’t want it.”

“Well, we must educate them,” said
Vernon. “I have great hopes that the
women whom I know will be aroused
by what we are doing.”

“I have no doubt they will,” said
Miss Greene. There was something
enigmatical in her words, and Vernon
glanced uneasily at her again.

“How do you mean?” he asked.

“You’ll learn when you see the newspapers
to-morrow,” said Miss Greene.

“Do you think they’ll have it in
full?” asked Vernon. He was all alert,
and his eyes sparkled in a new interest.

“On the first page,” she replied, with
conviction. “Have they your picture?”

“I don’t know,” Vernon replied.
“They can get it, though,” he added,
thoughtfully.

“They keep the portraits of all distinguished
public men on hand,” Miss
Greene said, with a certain reassurance
in her tone.

“Oh, well, I hope they’ll not print
it,” said Vernon, as if just then recalling
what was expected of a distinguished
public man under such circumstances.

.. image:: images/gs03.jpg
   :align: center

“That’s one of the penalties of being
in public life,” she answered with a
curious smile.

“A penalty the ladies will be glad to
pay when our reform is accomplished;
isn’t that so?” said Vernon, seeking relief
in a light bantering tone.

“I thought we were not going to
talk politics,” she said, turning and
looking at him. She adjusted her hat
and held herself resolutely erect.

The sun was going down behind the
prairies, the afternoon was almost gone;
as they watched the sunset, Miss Greene
broke the silence.

“It’s a familiar sight,” she said, and
Vernon thought that he had a clue at
last. She must know the prairies.

“It is just like a sunset at sea,” she
added.

When they had driven back to the
town and Vernon had left her at the
hotel, he turned to drive to the livery
stable.

“By George!” he said, suddenly,
speaking to himself. “I haven’t read
Amelia’s letter!”

He fumbled in his coat pocket.




VIII
====


:xl:`M`\ ISS GREENE’S predictions
were all realized in the sensation
Vernon’s speech created.
The newspapers gave whole columns
to it and illustrated their accounts
with portraits of Vernon and of Maria
Greene. Vernon thought of the pleasure
Amelia must find in his new fame, and
when he wrote to her he referred briefly
but with the proper modesty to his remarkable
personal triumph, and then
waited for her congratulations.

The legislative session was drawing
to a close; the customary Friday adjournment was not
taken, but sessions
were held that day and on Saturday,
for the work was piling up, the procrastinating
legislators having left it all
for the last minute.

The week following would see House
and Senate sweltering in shirt sleeves
and night sessions, and now, if a bill
were to become law it was necessary
that its sponsor stay, as it were, close
beside it, lest in the mighty rush of the
last few days it be lost.

Vernon, by virtue of his speech,
had assumed the championship of the
woman-suffrage resolution, and he felt
it necessary to forego his customary visit
to Chicago that week and remain over
Sunday in Springfield. He devoted the
day to composing a long letter to Miss
Greene, in which he described the situation
in detail, and suggested that it
would be well for her, if possible, to
come down to Springfield on Monday
and stay until the resolution had been
adopted. He gave her, in closing, such
pledges of his devotion to the cause of
womankind that she could hardly resist
any appeal he might make for her presence
and assistance.

On Monday he wired, urging the
necessity of her presence. Tuesday
morning brought him a reply, thanking
him, in behalf of women, for his
disinterested devotion to their cause, assuring
him of her own appreciation of
his services, and saying that she would
reach Springfield—Wednesday morning.

Meanwhile he had had no letter from
Amelia, and he began to wonder at her
silence. He was not only disappointed,
but piqued. He felt that his achievement deserved the
promptest recognition
from her, but he found a consolation,
that grew in spite of him, in the
thought that Maria Greene would soon
be in Springfield, and to his heart he
permitted Amelia’s silence to justify him
in a freer indulgence of attention to this
fascinating woman lawyer.

Tuesday evening the crowd, that
grows larger as the session nears its
close, filled the lobby of the Leland.
The night was warm, and to the heat
of politics was suddenly added the heat
of summer. Doors and windows were
flung wide to the night, and the tall
Egyptians, used as they were to the
sultry atmospheres of southern Illinois,
strode lazily about under their wide
slouch hats with waistcoats open and
cravats loosened, delighting in a new
cause for chaffing the Chicago men,
who had resumed their customary complaints
of the Springfield weather.

The smoke of cigars hung in the air.
The sound of many voices, the ring of
heavy laughter, the shuffle of feet over
the tiles, the clang of the clerk’s gong,
the incessant chitter of a telegraph instrument
that sped news to Chicago
over the *Courier’s* private wire, all these
influences surcharged the heavy air with
a nervous excitement that made men
speak quickly and their eyes glitter
under the brilliant lights of countless
electric bulbs. There was in that atmosphere
the play of myriad hopes and
ambitions, political, social, financial.
Special delegations of eminent lawyers,
leading citizens and prominent capitalists
were down from Chicago to look
after certain measures of importance.
Newspaper correspondents hurried from
group to group, gathering bits of information
to be woven into their night’s
despatches.

Late in the evening the governor
came over from the mansion, and his
coming stirred the throng with a new
sensation. His secretary was by his side,
and they mingled a while with the boys,
as the governor called them, after the
politician’s manner. Half a dozen congressmen
were there, thinking always
of renomination. Over in one corner
sat a United States senator, his high
hat tilted back on his perspiring brow.
A group of men had drawn their chairs
about him; they laughed at his stories.

One was aware that the speaker’s
apartments upstairs were crowded. One
could easily imagine it; the door of his
inner room, as men came and went,
opening now and then, and giving a
glimpse of the speaker himself, tired
and worn under the strain that would
tell so sorely on him before another
week could bring his labors and his
powers and his glories to an end.
Through all that hotel that night, in
lobby and in bar-room, on the stairs, in
the side halls and up and down in the
elevators, throbbed the fascination of
politics, which men play not so much
for its ends as for its means.

Vernon was of this crowd, moving
from one group to another, smoking,
laughing, talking. His heart may have
been a little sore at the thought of
Amelia’s strange neglect of him, but
the soreness had subsided until now it
was but a slight numbness which he
could forget at times, and when he did
think of it, it but gave him resolution
to play the game more fiercely.

He knew that it was incumbent on
him to make sure of the adoption of the
resolution on the morrow. He had already
spoken to the lieutenant-governor
and had promise of recognition. But he
realized that it would be wise to make
a little canvass, though he had no doubt
that all was well, and that by the next
night he could mingle with this crowd
serene and happy in the thought that
his work was done; perhaps he might
even spend the evening in the company
of Maria Greene. His heart gave
a little leap at this new and happy
thought, and if the remembrance of
Amelia came back just at that instant,
its obtrusion only made his eyes burn
the brighter.

He found it pleasant as he threaded
his way through the crowd to halt senators
as he met them and say:

“Well, the woman-suffrage resolution
comes up to-morrow. You’ll be
for it, of course?”

It gave him such a legislative and
statesmanlike importance to do this.
As he was going leisurely about this
quest, testing some of the sensations of
a parliamentary leader, Cowley, the
correspondent of the *Courier*, accosted
him, and, showing his teeth in that odd
smile of his, asked if he cared to say
anything about the resolution.

“Only that it comes up as a special
order in the morning, and that I have
no doubt whatever of its adoption by
the Senate.”

“Have you assurances from—”

“From everybody, and every assurance,”
said Vernon. “They’re all for
it. Come and have a cigar.”

They went over to the cigar stand,
and when they had lighted their cigars
Cowley said:

“Let’s go out for a little walk; I
may be able to tell you something that
will interest you.”




IX
==


:xl:`V`\ ERNON was glad enough of
a breath of the evening air, and
they went down the steps to
the sidewalk. Along the curbstone
many men had placed chairs and in
these cool and quiet eddies of the
brawling stream of politics they joked
and laughed peacefully. Sixth Street
stretched away dark and inviting. Vernon
and Cowley turned southward and
strolled along companionably. The air
was delicious after the blaze of the
hotel; the black shade of a moonless
night was restful; their cigars were
fragrant.

“I’ve just got hold of a story,” began
Cowley, after they had enjoyed the
night for a moment in silence. “I’ve
just got hold of a story—” he spoke,
of course, as always, from the detached
standpoint of a newspaper man, “which
you ought to know.”

“What is it?” asked Vernon.

“Porter and Braidwood are against
your resolution.” Cowley spoke these
names in a tone that told how futile
any opposition would be. “And
Wright and his fellows are against it,
too,” he added.

“Nonsense,” said Vernon.

“Well, you’ll see,” replied Cowley.

“But they told me—”

“Oh, well, that’s all right. They’ve
changed in the last day or two.”

“Why?”

“Well, they say it’s risky from a
party standpoint. They think they
already have all the load they want to
carry in the fall campaign. Besides,
they—”

“What?”

“They say there’s no demand for
such a radical step, and so see no reason
for taking it.”

“No demand for it?”

“No, on the contrary,” Cowley
halted an instant and in his palm
sheltered a lighted match for his extinguished
cigar. “On the contrary,
there’s a lot of people against it.”

“Since when?”

“They’ve been getting letters in the
last few days—they’ve just been pouring
in on ’em—and they’re from women,
too.”

“From women!”

“Yes, from women; the first ladies in
the land.” Cowley spoke with a sneer.

Vernon laughed.

“All right,” said Cowley in the careless
tone of one who has discharged
a duty. “Wait till you see Mrs.
Overman Hodge-Lathrop land in here
to-morrow.”

“Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop!”
Vernon stopped still in the middle of
the sidewalk and turned in surprise and
fear to Cowley. Cowley enjoyed the
little sensation he had produced.

“Yes, she’s coming down on the
Alton to-night. And she’s bringing
some of her crowd with her. The
women’s clubs are all stirred up about
the matter.”

Vernon was silent for a moment,
then he wheeled suddenly, and said:
“Well, I’m much obliged to you,
Cowley, but I’d better be getting back
to the hotel.”

“It may not be serious after all,”
Cowley said with tardy reassurance,
“but there’s danger, and I thought I’d
let you know. I’m sending a pretty
good story in to-night about it; they’ll
cover the Chicago end from the office.”

“But they were all for it,” Vernon
muttered.

“Oh, well, you know they never
took the thing very seriously. Of course
they passed it in the House just to line
up old man Ames for the apportionment
bill. They didn’t think it would
amount to anything.”

“Yes, I know—but Maria Burley
Greene—”

“Well, she’s a pretty woman; that’s
all.”

“You bet she is,” said Vernon, “and
she’ll be down here again to-morrow,
too.”

“Will she?” said Cowley eagerly,
with his strange smile.

“Yes—but, look here, Charlie!”
Vernon exclaimed, “don’t you go mixing
me up with her, now, understand?”

“Oh, I understand,” said Cowley,
and he laughed significantly.

When Vernon reached the hotel he
set to work in earnest. He tramped
about half the night, until he had seen
every senator who could be found. He
noted a change in them; if he did not
find them hostile he found many of
them shy and reluctant. But when he
went to his room he had enough promises
to allay his fears and to restore, in
a measure, his confidence, and he fell
asleep thinking of Maria Greene, happy
in the thought that she would be there
with her charms to offset the social
influence of Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop.




X
=


:xl:`V`\ ERNON went down to breakfast
the next morning wearing
the new summer clothes his
tailor had sent to him from Chicago
the day before. He had a flower in
his buttonhole; a red rose, indeed,
showing his colors for the final triumphant
day.

The rotunda of the hotel, swept of
the litter of the night before, was clean
and cool, and the morning air of a perfect
day came in refreshingly at the
open doors. The farmer members, confirmed
in the habit of early rising, were
already sauntering aimlessly about, but
otherwise statesmen still slumbered,
tired out by their labors of the night
before.

.. image:: images/gs04.jpg
   :align: center

Vernon, in the nervous excitement
which arouses one at the dawn of any
day that is to be big with events, had
risen earlier than was his wont. He
hastened into the dining-room, and
there, at the first table his eye alighted
on, sat Maria Burley Greene. She saw
him at once, for she faced the door,
and she greeted him with a brilliant
smile. With springing step he rushed
toward her, both hands extended in his
eagerness. She half rose to take them;
their greeting silenced the early breakfasters
for an instant. Then he sat down
opposite her and leaned over with a
radiant face as near to her as might be,
considering the width of table-cloth and
the breakfast things between.

“And so you’re here at last!” he exclaimed.

His eyes quickly took in her toilet;
remarkably fresh it was, though it had
been made on the Springfield sleeper.
It gave none of those evidences of being
but the late flowering of a toilet that
had been made the night before, as do
the toilets of some ladies under similar
circumstances. She wore this morning
a suit of brown, tailored faultlessly to
every flat seam, and a little turban to
match it. Beside her plate lay her veil,
her gloves, and a brass tagged key. And
her face, clear and rosy in its rich beauty,
was good to look upon. The waiter
had just brought her strawberries.

“Send John to me,” said Vernon to
the waiter. “I’ll take my breakfast
here. May I?” He lifted his eyes
to Miss Greene’s.

“Surely,” said she, “we’ll have much
to discuss.”

“And so you’re here again at last,”
repeated Vernon, as if he had not already
made the same observation. He
laid, this time, perhaps a little more
stress on the “at last.” She must have
noted that fact, for she blushed, red as
the strawberries she began to turn over
with a critically poised fork.

“And did you come down alone?”
Vernon went on.

“No, not exactly,” said Miss Greene.
“Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop, and, I
believe, several—”

“Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop!”

“I think,” said Miss Greene, “that
she sits somewhere behind.” There was
a twinkle in the eyes she lifted for an
instant from her berries.

Vernon scanned the dining-room.
There was Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop,
in all her—and yes, beside
her, sheltered snugly under her all-protecting
wing, was Amelia Ansley! They
were at a long table, Mrs. Overman
Hodge-Lathrop at the head, and with
them half a dozen women, severe, and
most aggressively respectable. They
sat—all of them—erect, pecking at
their food with a distrust that was not
so much a material caution as a spiritual
evidence of their superiority to most of
the things with which they were thrust
in contact every day. Their hats
scarcely trembled, such was the immense
propriety of their attitudes; they
did not bend at all, even to the cream.

.. image:: images/gs05.jpg
   :align: center

Vernon, who was taking all this in
at a glance, saw that Mrs. Overman
Hodge-Lathrop was severer than he had
ever imagined it possible for women to
be—even such a woman as she. He
would not have been surprised had he
suddenly been told that her name had
acquired another hyphen; certainly her
dignity had been rehyphenated. There
she sat, with her broad shoulders and
ample bust, her arms jeopardizing the
sleeves of her jacket.

It was the most impressive breakfast
table he had ever seen. It might have
given him a vision of the future, when
he should have secured for women all
their civil and political rights, and the
nation had progressed to female lieutenant-generals,
who would be forced
at times to dine in public with their
staffs. But he had no such vision, of
course; the very spiritual aversion of
those women to such a thought would
have prevented it, occultly.

In point of fact, his regard in an instant had ceased
to be general and had
become specific, having Amelia for its
objective. She sat on the right of her
commander, a rather timid aide; and
she seemed spiritually to snuggle more
closely under her protecting shadow
with each passing moment. She seemed
to be half frightened, and had the look
of a little girl who is about to cry. Her
gray figure, with its hat of violets above
her dark hair, was, on the instant, half
pathetic to Vernon. She sat facing
him, her face downcast.

There was no conversation at that
table; it was to be seen at a glance indeed
that among those ladies there
would be need for none, all things having
been prearranged for them. Vernon
noted that Amelia seemed to him more
dainty, more fragile than she had ever
been before, and his heart surged out
toward her. Then she raised her eyes
slowly, and held him, until from their
depths she stabbed with one swift
glance, a glance full of all accusation,
indictment and reproach. The stab
went to his heart with a pain that made
him exclaim. Then perceiving that
the complicating moments were flying,
he rose hastily, and with half an apology
to Miss Greene, he rushed across
the dining-room.




XI
==


:xl:`N`\ ONE of the ladies relaxed at
Vernon’s approach, Mrs. Overman
Hodge-Lathrop least of
all. On the contrary she seemed to
swell into proportions that were colossal
and terrifying, and when Vernon
came within her sphere of influence
his manner at once subdued itself into
an apology.

“Why, Amelia—Mrs. Hodge-Lathrop!”
he cried, “and Mrs. Standish,
Mrs. Barbourton, Mrs. Trales, Mrs.
Langdon—how do you do?”

He went, of course, straight to Mrs.
Overman Hodge-Lathrop’s side, the side
that sheltered Amelia, and he tried to
take the hands of both women at once.
Amelia gave him hers coldly, without
a word and without a look. He grew
weak, inane, and laughed uneasily.

“Delightful morning,” he said, “this
country air down here is—”

“Morley,” said Mrs. Overman
Hodge-Lathrop, severely, “take that
seat at the foot of the table.”

He obeyed, meekly. The ladies, he
thought, from the rustle of their skirts,
withdrew themselves subtly. The only
glances they vouchsafed him were side-long
and disapproving. He found it
impossible to speak, and so waited. He
could not recall having experienced
similar sensations since those menacing
occasions of boyhood when he had been
sent to the library to await his father’s
coming.

“Delightful morning, indeed!” Mrs.
Overman Hodge-Lathrop said, in her
most select tones. “Delightful morning
to bring us poor old ladies down
into the country!”

“I bring you down!” ejaculated
Vernon.

“Morley,” she said, “I don’t wish
to have one word from you, not one;
do you understand? Your talent for
speech has caused trouble enough as it
is. Lucky we shall be if we can undo
the half of it!”

Vernon shrank.

“Morley Vernon,” Mrs. Overman
Hodge-Lathrop continued, “do you
know what I have a notion to do?”

“No, Mrs. Hodge-Lathrop,” he said
in a very little voice.

“Well, sir, I’ve a notion to give you
a good spanking.”

Vernon shot a glance at her.

“Oh, you needn’t look, sir,” she continued,
“you needn’t look! It wouldn’t
be the first time, as you well know—and
it isn’t so many years ago—and I
have your mother’s full permission, too.”

The chain of ladylike sympathy that
passed about the table at this declaration
was broken only when its ends
converged on Vernon. Even then they
seemed to pinch him.

“Your poor, dear mother,” Mrs.
Overman Hodge-Lathrop went on,
“insisted, indeed, on coming down herself,
but I knew she could never stand
such a trip. I told her,” and here Mrs.
Overman Hodge-Lathrop paused for an
instant, “I told her that I thought *I*
could manage.”

There was a vast significance in this
speech.

The waiter had brought the substantials
to the ladies, and Mrs. Overman
Hodge-Lathrop began eating determinedly.

“It was, of course, just what I had
always predicted,” she went on, in a
staccato that was timed by the rise of
her fork to her lips, “I knew that politics
would inevitably corrupt you, soon
or late. And now it has brought you
to this.”

“To what?” asked Vernon, suddenly
growing bold and reckless. Amelia had
not given him one glance; she was
picking at her chop.

Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop, raising
her gold glasses and setting them
aristocratically on the bridge of her
nose, fixed her eyes on Vernon.

“Morley,” she said, “we know. We
have heard and we have read. The
Chicago press is an institution that, fortunately,
still survives in these iconoclastic
days. You know very well, of
course, what I mean. Please do not
compel me to go into the revolting
particulars.” She took her glasses down
from her nose, as if that officially terminated
the matter.

“But really, Mrs. Hodge-Lathrop,”
said Vernon. He was growing angry,
and then, too, he was conscious somehow
that Miss Greene was looking at
him. His waiter, John, timidly approached
with a glance at the awful
presence of Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop,
and said:

“Yo’ breakfus, Senato’, is gettin’
col’.”

“That may wait,” said Mrs. Overman
Hodge-Lathrop, and John sprang
back out of range.

Vernon was determined, then, to have
it out.

“Really, Mrs. Hodge-Lathrop, jesting
aside—”

“Jesting!” cried Mrs. Overman
Hodge-Lathrop, “jesting! Indeed, my
boy, this is quite a serious business!”
She tapped with her forefinger.

“Well, then, all right,” said Vernon,
“I don’t know what I’ve done. All I
have done has been to champion a
measure—and I may add, without
boasting, I hope, with some success—all
I have done has been to champion
a measure which was to benefit your
sex, to secure your rights, to—”

“Morley!” Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop said,
cutting him short. “Morley,
have you indeed fallen so low? It
is incomprehensible to me, that a young
man who had the mother you have,
who had the advantages you have had,
who was born and bred as you were,
should so easily have lost his respect for
women!”

“Lost my respect for women!” cried
Vernon, and then he laughed. “Now,
Mrs. Hodge-Lathrop,” he went on with
a shade of irritation in his tone, “this
is too much!”

Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop was
calm.

“Have you shown her any respect?”
she went on. “Have you not, on the
contrary, said and done everything you
could, to drag her down from her exalted
station, to pull her to the earth,
to bring her to a level with men, to
make her soil herself with politics, by
scheming and voting and caucusing and
buttonholing and wire-pulling? You
would have her degrade and unsex herself
by going to the polls, to caucuses
and conventions; you would have her,
no doubt, in time, lobbying for and
against measures in the council chamber
and the legislature.”

Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop
paused and lifted her gold eye-glasses
once more to the bridge of her high,
aristocratic nose.

“Is it that kind of women you
have been brought up with, Morley?
Do we look like that sort? Glance
around this table—do we look like
that sort of women?”

The ladies stiffened haughtily, disdainfully,
under the impending inspection,
knowing full well how easily they
would pass muster.

“And, if that were not enough,”
Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop went on
inexorably, “we come here to plead
with you and find you hobnobbing with
that mannish thing, that *female* lawyer!”

She spoke the word *female* as if it
conveyed some distinct idea of reproach.
She was probing another chop
with her fork. She had sent the pot
of coffee back to the kitchen, ordering
the waiter to tell the cook that she was
accustomed to drink her coffee hot.

“And now, Morley Vernon, listen to
me,” she said, as if he were about to
hear the conclusion of the whole matter.
“If you have any spark of honor
left in you, you will undo what you
have already done. This resolution
must be defeated in the Senate to-day;
I am down here to see that it is done.
We go to the State House after breakfast,
and these ladies will assist me in
laying before each member of the
Senate this matter in its true and exact
light. As for our rights,” she paused
and looked at him fixedly, “as for our
rights, I think we are perfectly capable
of preserving them.”

Her look put that question beyond
all dispute.

“And now,” she resumed, “you
would better take a little breakfast
yourself; you look as if you needed
strength.”

Vernon rose. He stood for an instant
looking at Amelia, but she glanced at
him only casually.

“I suppose, Amelia, I shall see you
later in the morning?”

“I suppose so, Mr. Vernon,” she said.
“But pray do not let me keep you from
rejoining your companion.” She was
quite airy, and lifted her coffee-cup with
one little finger quirked up higher than
he had ever seen it before.

He went back to where Miss Greene
sat, and where his breakfast lay.

“My goodness!” he said, seating
himself. “I’ve had a time!”

“I should imagine so,” said Miss
Greene.

She was just touching her napkin to
her lips with a final air. She carefully
pushed back her chair, and rose from
the table.

“I beg your pardon,” he stammered,
getting up himself, “I’ll see you after
breakfast.”

Miss Greene bowed. Then she left
the dining-room.




XII
===


:xl:`M`\ ORLEY VERNON came out
of the dining-room in a temper
far different from that he
had worn when he went in. His breakfast,
after so many vicissitudes, was sure
to be a failure, though John, striving
against fate, had tried to restore the
repast to its original excellence by replacing
each dish with a fresh one. He
affected a heroic cheerfulness, too, but
the cheer was hollow, for his experience
of men and of breakfasts must
have taught him that such disasters can
never be repaired.

Vernon, however, had heavier things
on his mind. In his new position as
knight-errant of Illinois womankind,
he had looked forward to this day as the
one of triumph; now, at its beginning,
he found himself with two offended
women on his hands, and two hopelessly
irreconcilable mistresses to serve. He
began to see that the lot of a constructive
statesman is trying; he would never
criticize leaders again.

The lobby of the hotel was filling
rapidly, and men with their hair still
damp from the morning combing were
passing into the breakfast room with
newspapers in their hands. In the
center of the lobby, however, he saw
a group of senators, and out of the
middle of the group rose a dark bonnet;
the flowers on the bonnet bobbed now
and then decisively. Around it were
clustered other bonnets, but they were
motionless, and, as it were, subordinate.

“Can you tell me who that is?”
asked Brooks of Alexander, jerking his
thumb at the group.

“Yes,” said Vernon, “that’s General
Hodge-Lathrop. She’s on her way to
the front to assume command.”

“Oh!” said Brooks. “I saw something
in the papers—” And he went
away, reading as he walked.

Vernon looked everywhere for Miss
Greene, but he could not find her. The
porter at the Capitol Avenue entrance
told him that she had driven over to
the State House a few minutes before.
Vernon was seized by an impulse to
follow, but he remembered Amelia.
He could not let matters go on thus
between them. If only Mrs. Overman
Hodge-Lathrop were not in command;
if he could get Amelia away from her
for a while, if he could see her alone,
he felt that explanations would be possible.

He looked at his watch; it was half-past
nine; the Senate would convene
at ten; the resolution would not be
reached before half-past ten at any
rate; and so he determined to brave
Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop again.
He turned back into the lobby; there
she was, hobnobbing with men; she
did not pass from group to group, after
the manner of any other lobbyist, but
by some coercion he wished he might
be master of, she drew them unerringly
to her side. Now she had Braidwood,
the leader of the House, and chairman
of the steering committee, and Porter,
the leader of the Senate. She appeared
to be giving them instructions.

She had set her committee on less
important game; the ladies were scattered
over the rotunda, each talking to
a little set of men. When Mrs. Overman
Hodge-Lathrop saw Vernon coming,
she turned from Braidwood and Porter
and stood awaiting him. Strangely
enough Braidwood and Porter stayed
where they were, as if she had put
them there. And Vernon reflected that
he had never known them, as doubtless
no one else had ever known them, to
do such a thing as that before.

“Where’s Amelia?” he asked before
she could speak.

“I have sent her upstairs,” said
Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop, “poor
child!”

Vernon wondered why “poor child.”

“It’s really too bad,” Mrs. Overman
Hodge-Lathrop continued.

“What is too bad?” demanded Vernon.
He had grown sulky.

Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop
looked at him pityingly.

“Morley,” she said in a vast solemn
tone that came slowly up from her
great stays, “I can make allowances, of
course. I know something of the
nature of man; I will admit that that
Greene woman is remarkably handsome,
and of her cleverness there can
be no doubt. I don’t altogether blame
you.”

She paused that Vernon might comprehend
to the fullest her marvelous
magnanimity.

“But at the same time it has been
hard on poor little Amelia. I saw no
other way than to bring her down.
You must go to her at once.”

She turned toward Braidwood and
Porter, still standing where she had
left them.

“When you have done, I’ll see you
with reference to this miserable resolution;
but that can wait till we are at
the Capitol. This other matter comes
first, of course.”

She smiled with a fat sweetness.

“And Morley,” she said, “order two
carriages for us at ten o’clock. You
may drive to the Capitol with us.”

And she went away.

Vernon ordered the carriages, and in
turning the whole matter over in his
mind he came to the conclusion that
he must deal with these complications
one at a time; Miss Greene, as events
now had shaped themselves, would have
to wait until he got over to the State
House.




XIII
====


:xl:`V`\ ERNON found Amelia in one
of the hotel parlors, seated on
a sofa by a window. She was
resting her chin in her hand and looking
down into Capitol Avenue.

“Amelia,” he said, bending over her.
“What is it? tell me.”

He sat down beside her, and sought
to engage one of her hands in his own,
but she withdrew it, and pressed it with
the other and the handkerchief in both,
to her lips and chin. Vernon glanced
about the respectable parlors, maintained
in instant readiness for anybody that
might happen along with his little comedy or his little
tragedy. She continued
to look obdurately out of the window.

“Amelia,” he said, “aren’t you going
to speak to me? Tell me what I have
done.”

Still there came no answer. He flung
himself back on the sofa helplessly.

“Well,” he said, “I don’t know what
it all means. I’ve tried to fathom it in
the last hour, but it’s too deep for me;
I give it up.” He flung out his hands
to illustrate his abandonment.

“God knows,” he suddenly exclaimed,
“I was only trying to do something
worthy—for your sake!”

“Please don’t swear, Morley,” Amelia
said.

He looked up swiftly.

.. image:: images/gs06.jpg
   :align: center

“Well—” he began explosively, but
he didn’t continue. He relapsed into
a moody silence. He stretched his legs
out before him in an ungainly attitude,
with his hands plunged deep in his
trousers’ pockets. Then he knitted his
brows and tried to think.

“I suppose,” he said, as if he were
thinking aloud, “that you expect some
explanation, some apology.”

“Oh, not at all,” she said lightly,
in the most musical tone she could
command.

“Very well,” he said, “I wouldn’t
know where to begin if you did. I’m
sure I’m not aware of having—”

She began to hum softly, to herself,
as it were, some tuneless air. He remembered
that it was a way she had
when she was angry. It was intended
to show the last and utmost personal
unconcern. In such circumstances the
tune was apt to be an improvisation
and was never melodious. Sometimes
it made her easier to deal with, sometimes
harder; he could never tell.

“I don’t exactly see what we are
here for,” he ventured, stealing a look
at her. She had no reply. He fidgeted
a moment and then began drumming
with his fingers on the arm of the sofa.

“Please don’t do that,” she said.

He stopped suddenly.

“If you would be good enough, *kind*
enough,” he said it sarcastically, “to indicate,
to suggest even, what I am to
do—to say.”

“I’m sure I can’t,” she said. “You
came. I presumed you had something
to say to me.”

“Well, I have something to say to
you,” Vernon went on impetuously.
“Why didn’t you answer my letters?
Why have you treated me this way?
That’s what I want to know.”

He leaned toward her. He was
conscious of two emotions, two passions,
struggling within him, one of anger,
almost hate, the other of love, and
strangely enough they had a striking
similarity in their effect upon him. He
felt like reproaching, yet he knew that
was not the way, and he made a desperate
struggle to conquer himself.

He tried to look into her face, but
she only turned farther away from him.

“I’ve spent the most miserable week
I ever knew, doomed to stay here, unable
to get away to go to you, and with
this fight on my hands!”

“You seemed to be having a fairly
good time,” the girl said.

“Now, Amelia, look here,” said Vernon,
“let’s not act like children any
longer; let’s not have anything so foolish
and little between us.”

His tone made his words a plea, but
it plainly had no effect upon her, for
she did not answer. They sat there,
then, in silence.

“Why didn’t you write?” Vernon
demanded after a little while. He
looked at her, and she straightened up
and her eyes flashed.

“Why didn’t I write!” she exclaimed.
“What was I to write, pray? Were not
your letters full of this odious Maria
Burlaps Greene? And as if that were
not enough, weren’t the papers full of
you two? And that speech—oh, that
speech—that Portia and Helen, and ‘I
fill this cup to one made up,’ ah, it was
sickening!” She flirted away again.

“But, darling,” Vernon cried, “listen—you
misunderstood—I meant all that
for *you*, didn’t you understand?”

She stirred.

“Didn’t you see? Why, dearest, I
thought that when you read the papers
you’d be the proudest girl alive!”

Her lip curled.

“I read the papers,” she said, and
then added, significantly, “this once,
anyway.”

“Well, you certainly don’t intend to
hold me responsible for what the papers
say, do you?”

She resumed her old attitude, her
elbow on the arm of the sofa, her chin
in her hand, and looked out the window.
And she began to hum again.

“And then,” he pressed on, “to
come down here and not even let me
know; why you even called me *Mister*
Vernon when I came into the dining-room.”

“Yes,” she exclaimed, suddenly
wheeling about, “I *saw* you come into
the dining-room this morning!” Her
eyes grew dark and flashed.

He regretted, on the instant.

“I saw you!” she went on. “I saw
you rush up to that Maria Burlaps
Greene woman, and—oh, it was horrid!”

“Her name isn’t Burlaps, dear,” said
Vernon.

“How do you know her name, I’d
like to know!” She put her hands to
her face. He saw her tears.

“Amelia,” he said masterfully, “if
you don’t stop that! Listen—we’ve
got to get down to business.”

She hastily brushed the tears from
her eyes. She was humming once more,
and tapping the toe of her boot on the
carpet, though she was not tapping it
in time to her tune.

“Why did you come down without
letting me know?” Vernon went on;
but still she was silent.

“You might at least have given
me—”

“Warning?” she said, with a keen
inflection.

“Amelia!” he said, and his tone carried
a rebuke.

“Well, I don’t care!” she cried.
“It’s all true! You couldn’t stay for
my dinner, but you could come off
down here and—”

She covered her face with her hands
and burst suddenly into tears. Vernon
gazed at her in astonishment.

“Why, dearest!” he said, leaning
over, and trying to take her in his arms.
She drew away from him, and sobbed.
Vernon glanced about the room helplessly.
He pleaded with her, but she
would not listen; neither would she
be comforted, but continued to sob.
Vernon, in a man’s anguish with a
weeping woman, stood up.

“Amelia! Amelia!” He bent over
her and spoke firmly. “You must not!
Listen to me! We must go over to—”

Suddenly he stood erect, and jerked
out his watch.

“Heavens!” he cried. “It’s half-past
ten!”

She tried to control herself then, and
sitting up, began to wipe her eyes.

“Sweetheart,” he said, “I must go
now. I should have been in the Senate
at ten o’clock; I hate to leave you, but
I’ll explain everything when I get
back.”

He waited an instant, then he went
on:

“Aren’t you going to say ‘Good bye’?”

Amelia got up.

“I’ll go, too,” she said. She was
still catching little sobs in her throat,
now and then. Vernon looked at her
in some surprise.

“Why—” he began, incredulously.

She must have divined his surprise.

“I have to help Mrs. Hodge-Lathrop,”
she said, as if in explanation.
“But, of course, I hate to bother you.”

“Oh, nonsense, dearest,” he said, impatiently.
“Come on. Let’s start.”

“But I can’t go looking this way,”
she said. She walked across the room,
and standing before a mirror, wiped her
eyes carefully, then arranged her hat
and her veil.

“Would anybody know?” she asked,
facing about for his inspection.

“Never—come on.”

They went out, and down the elevator. When they reached
the entrance,
Vernon looked up and down the street,
but there was no carriage in sight. The
street was quiet and the hotel wore an
air of desertion, telling that all the political
activity of Illinois had been transferred
to the State House. Vernon
looked around the corner, but the old
hack that always stood there was not
at its post.

“We’ll have to walk,” he said. “It’ll
take too long for them to get a carriage
around for us. It’s only a few blocks,
anyway. The air will do you good.”

As they set forth in the bright morning
sun they were calmer, and, having
come out into public view, for the time
being they dropped their differences
and their misunderstandings, and began
to talk in their common, ordinary
fashion.

“Did Mrs. Hodge-Lathrop ask you
to change me on the Ames Amendment?”
Vernon asked her.

“The what?”

“The Ames Amendment; that’s the
woman-suffrage measure.”

“No, do her justice; she didn’t.”

“What then?”

“She said she wanted me to work
against it, that’s all.”

“Didn’t she say anything about asking
*me* not to vote for it?”

“Well, yes; but I told her—”

“What?”

“That I wouldn’t try to influence
you in the least.”

Vernon made no reply.

“No,” she went on, “I’m to work
against it, of course.”

They were silent then, till suddenly
she appealed to him:

“Oh, Morley, I’ve got to ask strange
men, men I never met, to vote against
it! How am I ever!”

She shuddered.

“It’s all very strange,” Vernon said.




XIV
===


:xl:`T`\ HEY walked briskly down the
sloping street under the railroad
bridge and then up the
little hill whereon sits the Capitol of
Illinois. They could see the big flag
high up on the dome standing out in
the prairie wind, and the little flags on
the House wing and the Senate wing
whipping joyously, sprightly symbols
of the sitting of both houses.

Now and then they heard cheers
from the House wing, where the legislative
riot that ends a session was already
beginning. They passed into the dark
and cool corridors of the State House,
then up to the third floor, where members
and messenger-boys, correspondents
and page-boys, rushed always across
from one house to the other, swinging
hurriedly around the brass railing of
the rotunda. It seemed that the tide of
legislative life was just then setting in
toward the Senate.

“Oh, Morley,” whispered Amelia,
forgetting his offense, and clinging close
to him, “I can’t go in there, really I
can’t.”

“Nonsense,” said Vernon, “come on.
I’ll deliver you to Mrs. Hodge-Lathrop
in a minute; then you’ll be perfectly
safe. Besides, you have your lobbying
to do.”

They reached the Senate entrance,
and the doorkeeper, seeing a senator,
opened a way through the crowd for
their passage. There was confusion
everywhere, the nervous and excited
hum of voices from the floor, from the
vestibule, from the galleries, from all
around. And just as they stepped up to
the raised floor whereon the desks of
senators are placed, the gavel fell, and
stillness with it. They saw the lieutenant-governor
leaning over his desk,
studying a slip of paper he held in his
hand.

“On this question,” he said, “the
yeas are thirty and the nays are seventeen;
and two-thirds of the members-elect
having failed to vote in the affirmative,
the resolution is lost.”

Vernon stood transfixed. The whole
thing was borne in upon him; he saw
Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop, and the
expression of calm and lofty satisfaction
that had settled on her face told him
that it was the Ames Amendment that
had been lost. But some new thought
seemed to strike her, for when Senator
Porter looked around with something
like a smile of congratulation, she beckoned him,
and he hastened to her side.

“Move to reconsider and to lay on
the table,” she said, and with a look
of admiration he turned and made the
motion. It was put, it was carried of
course, and the amendment was lost
irrevocably.

“Well, that’s attended to,” said Mrs.
Overman Hodge-Lathrop. “Ah, Morley,”
she said calmly, “you here? And
Amelia?”

“She’s here,” he said, “and I—I
didn’t get here on time!” The shame
and mortification on his face were
pitiable, though they could not have
touched Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop’s
heart.

“And I didn’t get here on time,” he
repeated ruefully.

“Why, my dear boy,” said Mrs.
Overman Hodge-Lathrop, “I didn’t
intend that you should.”

He looked at her fiercely, angrily, a
second.

“So that was the game, was it?” he
said. He whirled, with another fierce
look, on Amelia.

“That was the game, yes, Morley,”
said Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop,
“but you needn’t look at Amelia so—she
was utterly innocent, the dear little
thing.”

Amelia came up. She had seen Vernon’s
expression.

“What is it—what has happened?”
she inquired.

“Well, I got here too late, that’s
all,” said Vernon. “I was detained,
and Mrs. Hodge-Lathrop has just now
kindly told me that she had arranged
that I should be. I’m ruined, that’s all;
I’m lost.”

“No, Morley,” said Mrs. Hodge-Lathrop,
“you’re saved. You’re saved
from yourself.” She still smiled at him
sweetly. “You might have made, don’t
you know, another one of your speeches.”

Vernon bit his lip and walked away.
He encountered Martin, but could only
look at him helplessly. Martin returned
his look with one of surprise.

“You here?” he said.

“Well, yes,” replied Vernon. “At
last—too late, it seems.”

The surprise had not left Martin’s
face; to it was now added a perplexity.

“If we’d known,” said Martin; “but
we thought, that is, we heard, that you
had ducked.”

Vernon shook his head as with a pain
that would not let him speak. He was
looking disconsolately across the chamber
to where Miss Greene stood talking
with Bull Burns. As in a dream, he
heard Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop
exclaim:

“Ah, there is that Greene woman!”

Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop was
lifting her gold glasses again. Vernon
was wondering how he was to face the
Greene woman. But at Mrs. Overman
Hodge-Lathrop’s words an idea came
to him.

“I’ll go bring her and introduce
her,” he said. He bolted away and
went toward her. She was cold and
distant. Fortunately, Burns fled at his
approach.

“Can you forgive me?” he said.
“I’ll explain it all in an instant.”

“And how?” she asked with a chill
rise in her tone.

“Have you ever met Mrs. Overman
Hodge-Lathrop?” he asked significantly.

“No,” she answered.

“Then permit me,” he said. She
went with him. Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop
had withdrawn her delegation
to the rear of the chamber, and there
awaited Vernon’s return.

“Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop,
permit me to present Miss Greene;
Miss Ansley, Miss Greene.” And so on,
in the order of relative rank, he
introduced her to the other ladies.

Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop extended
her hand officially. Miss Greene
took it with a smile.

“I am very glad,” she said, “to meet
Mrs.—Mrs.—ah, pardon me, but what
was the name?”

“Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop,”
Vernon said.

“Ah, Mrs. Lathrop.”

Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop
seemed, to the eye, to swell.

“You have a charming little city
here, Mrs. Lathrop. We poor Chicagoans
love to get down into the
country once in a while, you know.”

Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop
reared back a little.

“No doubt,” she stammered. “I
have always found it so.”

Miss Greene feigned surprise, and
affected a look of perplexity. Vernon
withdrew a step, and with his chin in
his hand looked on out of eyes that
gloated. The other women in the
party exchanged glances of horror and
wrath. Mrs. Barbourton, for her part,
seemed unable to endure it.

“Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop lives
in Chicago,” she interjected.

“Oh!” cried Miss Greene. “Is it
possible? How very strange that one
could live in the city all one’s life and
yet not have heard!”

“Not so very strange, I fancy,” said
Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop. “One’s
circle is apt to be so far removed.”

“Yes?” said Miss Greene, with that
rising inflection. “Then you can not
have lived in Chicago long?”

“All my life,” snapped Mrs. Overman
Hodge-Lathrop.

“So long as that!” said Miss Greene
with eyes that stared incredibility. Mrs.
Overman Hodge-Lathrop actually colored.

.. image:: images/gs07.jpg
   :align: center

“You are enjoying your visit to
Springfield, I trust? You have seen the
Lincoln Monument and the Homestead?
How very interesting they must
be! And the Legislature offers novelty;
don’t you find it so?” She gathered
her skirts as if to withdraw. But Mrs.
Overman Hodge-Lathrop achieved a
smile.

“We have not enjoyed the pleasures of
sight-seeing. On the contrary, we came
to appear before the Senate,” she said.

Miss Greene surveyed her critically,
with that look in which one woman
inspects another woman’s attire. She
then extended her critical scrutiny to
the dress of the others.

“To be sure!” she said, “I should
have known.”

The ladies again exchanged glances.
Mrs. Barbourton plainly could not bear
that their position should be equivocal.
She doubtless had her little vainglorious
wish to have their success known.

“Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop
came down to appear in opposition to
the woman’s-rights resolution!” She
emphasized the word *woman* as if she
would not for worlds have been a
woman herself.

“Indeed!” exclaimed Miss Greene.
“I am sure her appearance must have
been a very convincing argument.”
She gave her opponent another searching
glance. Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop
was having difficulty in getting
her breath.

“We have been having a taste of
lobbying, Miss Greene,” she began,
“and—”

“How unpleasant!” said she.

“You know, possibly,” said Mrs.
Overman Hodge-Lathrop, regaining
something of her position.

“Indeed I do,” Miss Greene assented
sweetly, “but where it is in the line of
one’s profession, duty obscures the unpleasantness.
One can not, you know,
always choose one’s occupation. Good
morning!”

And catching her skirts, with a smile
and a bow she left.

The successful lobbyists stood in silence
a moment, looked one to another
with wide and staring eyes. Then at
last Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop
spoke.

“Morley,” she said, “I do wish you
could learn to discriminate in your introductions.”




XV
==


:xl:`I`\ N the evening, just before dinner,
Amelia and Vernon sat in the little
waiting room of the hotel. Mrs.
Overman Hodge-Lathrop and her ladies
had gone up to the suite they had taken
and were engaged in repairing the toilets
their political labors of the day had
somewhat damaged. Amelia had completed
her toilet more quickly than they
and had joined Vernon, waiting for her
below.

They sat in the dim little room
where Amelia could look across the
corridor to the elevator, expecting
every moment the coming of Mrs.
Overman Hodge-Lathrop. Now that
they found themselves alone and face
to face with the necessity of reconciliation,
a constraint had fallen on them.
Amelia constantly kept her eye on the
elevator. Men were passing and repassing
the open door, going to or coming
from the bar-room, and their loud
talk and laughter beat in waves into
the dim little retreat of the lovers.

As Vernon sat there he imagined
that all that talk was of him; more
than all, that all that laughter was at
him—though there was no more of
either than there was every evening
when the legislators came over to the
hotel for dinner. At last Amelia turned
to him.

“You’ve got the blues, haven’t you?”
she said. It would seem that somehow he
did her an injustice by having the blues.

“No,” he answered.

“Then what’s the matter?” she demanded.

Vernon glanced at her, and his glance
carried its own reproach.

“Oh!” she said, as if suddenly recalling
a trivial incident. “Still worrying
about that?”

“Well,” Vernon answered, “it has
some seriousness for me.”

Amelia, sitting properly erect, her
hands folded in her lap, twisted about
and faced him.

“You don’t mean, Morley, that you
are sorry it didn’t pass, do you?”

“It puts me in rather an awkward
position,” he said. “I suppose you know
that.”

“I don’t see how,” Amelia replied.

“Well,” Vernon explained, “to stand
for a measure of that importance, and
then at the final, critical moment, to
fail—”

“Oh, I see!” said Amelia, moving
away from him on the couch. “Of
course, if you regret the *time*, if you’d
rather have been over in the Senate
than to have been with *me*—why, of
course!” She gave a little deprecating
laugh.

Vernon leaned impulsively toward
her.

“But, dear,” he said, “you don’t understand!”

“And after your begging me to come
down to Springfield to see you!”
Amelia said. Her eyes were fixed on
the elevator, and just at that moment
the car came rushing down the shaft
and swished itself to a stop just when,
it seemed, it should have shattered
itself to pieces at the bottom. The elevator boy clanged
the iron door back,
and Maria Greene stepped out.

“There she is now!” said Amelia,
raising her head to see. Miss Greene
paused a moment to reply to the greeting
of some one of the politicians who
stopped to speak to her.

Amelia’s nose was elevated.

“And so that’s the wonderful hair
you all admire so much, is it?” she said.

“Well,” replied Vernon, almost defiantly,
“don’t you think it is rather
exceptional hair?”

Amelia turned on him with a look
of superior and pitying penetration.

“Does that shade deceive you?” she
asked. She smiled disconcertingly, as
she looked away again at Maria Greene.
The woman lawyer was just leaving the
politicians.

“And to think of wearing that hat
with that hair!” Amelia went on.
“Though of course,” she added with
deep meaning, “it may originally have
been the right shade; the poor hat can’t
be expected to change its color.”

Vernon had no answer for her.

“I wonder what explanation she’ll
have for her defeat,” said Amelia in a
tone that could not conceal its spirit
of triumph.

“I’m not worried about that,” said
Vernon. “I’m more concerned about
the explanation I’ll have.”

“Dearest!” exclaimed Amelia, swiftly
laying her hand on his. Her tone had
changed, and as she leaned toward him
with the new tenderness that her new
manner exhaled, Vernon felt a change
within himself, and his heart swelled.

“Dearest,” she said, in a voice that
hesitated before the idea of some necessary reparation,
“are you really so
badly disappointed?”

He looked at her, then suddenly he
drew her into his arms, and she let her
head rest for an instant on his shoulder;
but only for an instant. Then she exclaimed
and was erect and all propriety.

“You forget where we are, dear,”
she said.

“I don’t care about that,” he replied,
and then glancing swiftly about in all
directions, he kissed her.

“Morley!” she cried, and her cheeks
went red, a new and happy red.

They sat there, looking at each other.

“You didn’t consider, you didn’t *really*
consider her pretty, did you?” Amelia
asked.

“Why, Amelia, what a question!”

“But you didn’t? Don’t evade,
Morley.”

“Oh well, now, she’s not bad looking,
exactly, but as for beauty—well,
she’s rather what I’d call handsome.”

“Handsome!” Amelia exclaimed,
drawing back.

“Why, yes. Don’t you see, dear?”
Vernon was trying to laugh. “Can’t
you see the distinction? We call *men*
handsome, don’t we? Not pretty, or
anything like that. But women! Ah,
women! Them we call, now and then,
beautiful! And you, darling, you are
beautiful!”

They were face to face again, both
smiling radiantly. Then Amelia drew
away, saying:

“Morley, don’t be ridiculous.”

“But I’m dead in earnest, dear,” he
went on. “And I think you ought to
make some sort of amends for all the
misery you’ve caused me.”

“You poor boy!” she said, with the
pity that is part of a woman’s triumph.

“I did it,” he said, “just because I
love you, and have learned in you what
women are capable of, what they might
do in politics—”

“In politics! Morley! Can you
imagine me in politics? I thought you
had a more exalted opinion of women;
I thought you kept them on a higher
plane.”

“But you—” Vernon laughed, and
shook his head at the mystery of it,
but did not go on.

“Why, Morley, would you want to
see your mother or your sister or me,
or even Mrs. Hodge-Lathrop in politics?”

“Well,” he said, with a sudden and
serious emphasis, “not Mrs. Hodge-Lathrop
exactly. She’d be chairman
of the state central committee from the
start and, well—the machine would be
a corker, that’s all.”

The elevator was rushing down again
in its perilous descent, and when its
door flew open they saw Mrs. Overman
Hodge-Lathrop come out of the car.
Vernon rose hastily.

“There she is,” he said. “We
mustn’t keep her waiting.”

Amelia rose, but she caught his hand
and gave it a sudden pressure.

“But you haven’t answered my question,”
she said, with a continuity of
thought that was her final surprise for
him. “Are you so very badly disappointed,
after all?”

“Well, no,” he said. “I don’t think
it would do. It would—well, it would
complicate.”

Mrs. Hodge-Lathrop was standing in
the door, peering impatiently into the
dim little room. They started toward
her.

“Anyway, dear heart,” Amelia whispered
as they went, “remember this—that
you did it all for me.”

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