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Senator North

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her mother, and went to her boudoir and sat there for hours. Nothing could have put the ugly practical side of her romance so precisely before her as her mother's black and white statement, full of the little colloquial phrases with which an un-ambitious world expresses itself. Even for him, Betty reflected, she could not endure vulgar gossip, and wondered how any high-bred woman could for any man. "For what else does civilization mean," she thought, "if those of us that have its highest advantages are not wiser and more fastidious than the mob? And unless a woman is ready to go and live in a cave, she cannot be happy in the loss of the world's regard, for it can make her uncomfortable in quite a thousand little ways. Expediency is the root of all morality. It is stupid to be unmoral, and that is the long and the short of it. I would marry him to-morrow if I had to cook for him, if he were dishonoured by his country, if he were smitten suddenly with ill-health and never could walk again. I am willing to go through life alone for his sake, even without seeing him, and after he is dead and gone. I love him absolutely, and if there is another world I must meet him there. But I am not willing to become a social pariah on his account." She never had permitted her mind to linger on the practical aspect of a different relationship, to admit that such a chapter was possible outside of her imagination, but she did so now, deliberately. She knew that what her mother had intimated was true, that the happiness to be got out of it would amount to very little, and that the day would come when she would say that it was not worth the price. There were many times when she was not capable of reasoning coldly on this question, but she had been listening for two hours to Senator French on the restriction of immigration, and felt all intellect. Her mind turned to Harriet. There was a creature foredoomed to destruction by the forces within her, struggling in vain, assisted and guarded in vain. Should she, with her inheritance of kindly forces within and without, deliberately readjust her manifest lines into a likeness of Harriet Walker's? And she knew that even if she hoodwinked the world, the miserable deception of it all, the nervous terrors, not only would wear love down, but shatter her ideals of herself and him. She would be infinitely more miserable than now. It relieved her to have thought that phase out, and she put it aside. But the other? Must she give him up? What pleasure could she find in sitting here with him if her mother's apprehensive mind did not leave the room for a moment? What pleasure if a vulgar world were whispering? She reflected with some bitterness that one danger was receding. He had not entered this room since the day of her return. Although he had called several times, he had come in the evening, when she always sat with her mother, or in the morning, when Mrs. Madison again was sure to be present. She knew that he dared not come here, and that it was more than likely he never would call at the old hour again. She realized these two facts suddenly and vividly; her mind worked with a brutal frankness at times. She began to cry heavily, the tears raining on her intellectual mood and obliterating it. If she were not to see him alone again, she might as well ask him to come to the house on Thursday evenings only, and to show her no attention in public; if she could not have the old hours again, she wanted nothing less. And she wanted them passionately; those hours came back to her with a poignancy of happiness in memory that the present had not revealed, and the thought that they had gone for ever filled her with a suffocating anguish that was as complete as it was sudden. She implored him under her breath to come to her, then prayed that he would not.... She became conscious that she was in a mood to take any step, were he here, rather than lose him; and the mood terrified her. Would the time come when this intolerable pain would kill every inheritance in her brain, its empire the more absolute because it made passion itself insignificant in the more terrible want of the heart? If it did, she would marry Burleigh. She made up her mind instantly. She would fight as long as she could, for she passionately desired to live her life alone with the idea of this man; but if she were not strong enough, she would marry and bury herself in the West. Nothing but an irrevocable step would affect a permanent mental attitude, and Burleigh would give her little time for thought. VII Betty went very often to the Senate Gallery in these days, for it was the only place where one might have relief from the eternal subject of Cuba. Although the House broke loose under cover of the Diplomatic and Consular Appropriation Bill when it was in the Committee of the Whole and free of the Speaker's iron hand, and raged for two days with the vehemence of long-repressed passion, the Senate permitted only an occasional spurt from its warlike members, and pursued its even way with the important bills before it. But at teas, dinners, luncheons, and receptions people chattered with amiability or in suavity about the hostile demonstrations at Havana against Americans, the Spanish Minister's letter, Spain's demand for the recall of Consul-General Lee, the dying reconcentrados, the exploits of the insurgents, and the general possibilities of war. The old Madison house, which had ignored politics for half a century, vibrated with polite excitement on Thursday evenings. About a hundred people came to these receptions, which finished with a supper, and it was understood that the free expression of opinion should be the rule; consequently several repressed members of both Houses delivered impromptu speeches, in the guise of toasts, before that select audience; much to the amusement of Senator North and the Speaker of the House. Burleigh's was really impassioned and brilliant; and Armstrong's, if woolly in its phrasing and Populistic in its length, was sufficiently entertaining. As for Mrs. Madison, she became imbued with the fear that war would be declared in her house. Two Cabinet ministers had been added to the _salon_, and what they in conjunction with the colossal Speaker and Senators North and Ward might accomplish if they cared to try, was

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