IN 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."