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Senator North

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appalling to contemplate. She begged Betty to adjourn the _salon_ till peace had come again. But to this Betty would not hearken. It was the sun of her week, through whose heavy clouds flickered the pale stars of distractions for which she was beginning to care little. One of life's compensations is that there is always something ahead, some trifling event of interest or pleasure upon which one may fix one's eye and endeavour to forget the dreary tissue of monotony and commonplace between. Betty found herself acquiring the habit of casting her eye over the day as soon as she awoke in the morning, and if nothing distracting presented itself, she planned for something as well as she could. She endeavoured to introduce the pleasant English custom of asking a few congenial spirits to come for a cup of afternoon tea. These little informal reunions are among the most delightful episodes of London life, and if established as a custom in Washington would be like the greenest of oases in the whirling breathless sandstorms of that social Sahara. But even Betty Madison, strong as she was both in position and personality, met with but a moderate success. When women have from six to twenty-five calls to pay every afternoon of the season, with at least one tea a day besides, they have little time or inclination for pleasant informalities. Doubtless Miss Madison's friends felt that they should be relieved of the additional tax. Even the women of the fashionable set, which includes some of the Old Washingtonians and many newer comers of equally high degree, and which ignores the official set, preserve the same ridiculous fashion of calling in person six days in the week instead of merely leaving cards as in older and more civilized communities. In London, society has learned to combine the maximum of pleasure with the minimum of work. Washington society is its antithesis; and although many of the most brilliant men in America are in its official set, and the brightest and most charming women in its fashionable as well as political set, they are, through the exigencies of the old social structure, of little use to each other. Betty occasionally managed to capture three or four people who talked delightfully when they felt they had time to indulge in consecutive sentences, but as a rule people came on her reception day only, and many of them walked in at one door of her drawing-room and out at the other. The debate in the Senate on the payment of bonds interested her deeply, for she knew that it meant days of uneasiness for Senator North, who rarely was absent from his seat. His brief speech on the subject was the finest she had heard him make, and although it was bitter and sarcastic while he was arraigning the adherents of the resolution to pay the government debt in silver, he became impersonal and almost impassioned as he argued in behalf of national honesty. Betty never had seen him so close to excitement, and she wondered if he found it a relief to speak out on any subject. But if he ever thought of her down there he made no sign, for he neither raised his eyes to the gallery nor did he pay her a second visit in her select but conspicuous precinct. The resolution passed the Senate, and on that evening Senator North called at the Madison house. It was two weeks since he had called before, and although he had come to her evenings and they had met at several dinners, they had not attempted conversation. The Montgomery's and Carters had dined at the house, and all were in the parlour when he arrived. After a few minutes he was able to talk apart with Betty. They moved gradually toward the end of the room and sat down on a small sofa. "I am glad you came to-night," she said. "It was my impulse to go to you when I heard how the vote had gone." "I knew it," he replied, "and if I could have come straight up here to the old room, I should have hung up the vote with my overcoat in the hall." He looked harassed, and his eyes, while they had lost nothing of their magnetic power, were less calmly penetrating than usual. They looked as if their fires had been unloosed more than once of late and were under indifferent control. "You will not come to that room again!" "No. And I soon shall cease to come here at all except on Thursdays." "You almost have done that now. I think I get more satisfaction watching you from the gallery than anything else. You look very calm and senatorial, and you always are standing some one in a corner who is trying to make a speech." "I am relieved to know that I do not inspire the amazement of my colleagues. It is a long while since I have felt calm and senatorial, however. But these are days for alertness of mind, and even the most distracting of women must be shut up in her cupboard and forgotten for a few hours every day." "I think I rather like that." "Of course you do. A woman always likes a strong lover. And you have plenty of revenge, if you did but know." "I know," she said; and as she raised her eyes and looked at him steadily, he believed her. "Tell me at least that you miss coming to that room--I want to hear you say it." "Good God!" Betty caught her breath. But when women feel fire between their fingers and are reckless before the swift approach of a greater wretchedness than that possessing them, they are merciless to themselves and the man. "Can you stay away?" she whispered. "Can you?" "It is the one thing I can do." "Do you realize what you are saying?--that you have put me aside for ever? Are you willing to admit that it is all over? How am I to live on and on and on? Can you fancy me alone next summer in the Adirondacks--" "Hush! Hush! Do you wish me to come? Answer me honestly, without any feminine subterfuge." "No, I do not." "And I should not come if you did, for I know the price we both should pay better than you do, and only complete happiness could justify such a step. You and I could find happiness in marriage only--we both demand too much! But I also know that the higher faculties of the mind do not always prevail, and I shall not see you alone again." She pushed him further. "You take this philosophically because you have loved before and recovered. You feel sure that no love lasts." "When a man loves as I love you, he has no past. There are no

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