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Senator North

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Senator North laughed. "I hope she won't give you any real trouble. If she does, I shall feel more than half responsible. But otherwise she will be an interesting study for you. She is nearly all white; how much of racial lying, and slothfulness, barbarism, and general incapacity that black vein of hers contains will give you food for thought, for she certainly will reveal herself in the course of a year." "You must admit that a nature like that is a great responsibility." "Yes, but she alone can work through all the contradictions to the light, and she will do it naturally, under pressure of new experiences, within and without. Don't suggest even the word 'problem' to her, and don't look upon her as one, yourself. You have put her in the right conditions. Leave her alone and Time will do the rest. His work is indubious; never forget that. Are you going to marry Burleigh?" he added abruptly. She answered vehemently, "No! No!" "I thought not. I know you very little, so far, but I was willing to deny the report." "I often wonder why I don't fall in love with him. He really has every quality I admire. But much as I like him I should not mind if I knew I never should see him again. I have thought a good deal about it and I should like to understand it." She looked at him coaxingly, and he smiled, for he understood women very well; but he gave her the explanation she desired. "The reason is simple enough. The admired qualities, even when they are the component parts of a personality of one who more or less resembles a cherished ideal, never yet inspired love. Love is the result of two responsive sparks coming within each other's range of action. Their owners may be in certain ways unfitted for one another, but the responsive sparks, rising Nature only knows out of what combination of elements, fly straight, and Reason sulks. To put it in another way: Love is merely the intuitive faculty recognizing in another being the power to give its own lord happiness. It is a faculty that is very active in some people," he added with a laugh, "and when it is overworked it often goes wrong, like any other machinery. That is the reason why men who have loved many women make a mistake in marrying; the intuitive faculty is both dulled and coarsened by that time. They are still susceptible to charm, and that is about all." "Have you loved many women?" asked Betty, without preamble. He stood up and turned his back to the fire. Betty noted again how squarely he planted himself on his feet. "A few," he said bluntly. "Not many. I have not overworked my intuitive faculty, if that is what you mean. I was not thinking of myself when I spoke." He stared down at her for a few moments, during which it seemed to Betty that the air vibrated between them. Her breath began to shorten, and she dropped her eyes, lest their depths reveal the spark which was active enough in her. "Will you play for me?" he asked. "I lost a little girl a few years ago who played well, although she was only sixteen. I have disliked the piano ever since, but I should like to hear you play." She played to him for an hour, with tenderness, passion, and brilliancy. A gift had been cultivated by the best masters and hours of patient study. When he thanked her and rose to go and she put her hand in his, her face expressed all the bright earnestness of genuine friendship; there was not a sparkle of coquetry in her eyes. "Will you come in often on your way home when you are tired and would like to forget bills and things, and let me play to you? I won't talk --you must get so tired of voices!--and the practice will do me good." "Of course I will come. The pleasantest thing in life is a charming woman's face at the close of a busy day. Good-bye." When he had gone, Betty got into the depths of a chair and covered her eyes with her hand. For the first time she knew out of her own experience that love means a greater want than the satisfaction of the eye and mind. She would have given anything but her inherited ideals of right and wrong if he had come back and taken her in his arms and kissed her; and she loved him with adoration that he did not, that in all probability he never would, that although he had the great passions which stimulate all great brains, the inflexible honour which his State had rewarded and never questioned for thirty-five years must make short work of struggles with the ordinary temptations of man. As soon as a man awakens a woman's passions she begins to idealize him and there is no limit to the virtues he will be made to carry. But let a man be endowed by Nature with every noble and elevated attribute she has in her power to bestow, if he lacks sensuality a woman will see him in the clear cold light of reason. Betty Madison, having something of the intuitive faculty, in addition to that knowledge of man which any girl of twenty-seven who has had much love offered her must possess, made fewer mistakes even in the thick of a throbbing brain than most women make; the great danger she did not foresee until time had accustomed her somewhat to the wonder of being able to love at last, and Reason had resumed her place in a singularly clear and logical mind. XIX When Betty awoke next morning, she made up her mind that she would not suffer so long as she could see him. Beyond the present she absolutely refused to look. She had found more on the political sea than she had gone in search of, but if she could have foreseen this tumult that would have overwhelmed a weaker woman, she would not have clung to the shore. For although the ultimate of love was forbidden her, she had come into her kingdom, and was immeasurably happier than the millions of women whose love had run its course and turned cold, or been cast back at them. After all, there were so few people who were really happy, why should she complain because her love could not come to rice and old shoes, instead of being a beautiful secret thing, the more perfect, perhaps, because Commonplace, that ogre whose girth increases from year to year, and who sits remorseless in the dwellings of the united, could not breathe upon it? Harriet had returned without a cold, and the next morning Emory came in and took her to the Congressional Library, where they had luncheon.

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