"Why are you here yourself?" said Lydia, giving him a gentle look to convey that she was very grateful to him for thinking her so handsome.
"Why, I just told you," answered the governor, "because Fate said to herself: 'Now here's poor old Stephen Albee's been having a dull hard time of it. Let's have something pleasant happen to him. Let's have him meet Miss Thorne.'"
A lady on Lydia's other side, who gave her life to the reform of criminals and particularly hated those who remained outside of penal institutions, was horrified by what she considered the flirtatious tone of the conversation. She could hear—in fact she listened—that several meetings had been arranged before the governor's time came to speak.
Everything worked out exactly as Mrs. Galton had intended. The governor—who had expected to say that he was heart and soul with this great cause, to rehearse a few historic examples of prison mismanagement, to confide to his audience that a man of national reputation was at that moment waiting to see him about something of international importance, and then to get away in time to play a few holes of golf before dark—rose to his feet, fired with the determination to make a good speech, good enough to impress Lydia; and he did. He had a simple direct manner of speaking, so that no one noticed that his sentences themselves were rather oratorical and emotional. Most speakers, too many at least, have just the opposite technic—an oratorical manner and no matter behind it. He gave the impression, without actually saying so, that the only reason he had not given his life to prison reform was that the larger duty of the public service called him, and the only reason why he did not swamp his audience with the technical details of the subject was that it was too painful, too shocking.
There was great and sincere applause as he sat down. Workers were inspired, subscriptions did flow in. Before the next speaker rose, Lydia, in sight of the whole room, walked out, followed by the great man, who had explained hastily to Mrs. Galton that he was already late for an engagement with a man of national reputation who was waiting to discuss a matter of international importance. Mrs. Galton nodded amiably. She had little further use for the governor.
The next day Lydia went downtown to hear him conducting his investigation, and was impressed by the spectacle of his dominating will and crystalline mind in action. She came every day. Her life heretofore had not stimulated her to intellectual endeavor, but now she discovered that she had a good, keen mind. She learned the procedure of the investigation, remembered the evidence, read books—Wellman on Cross-Examination and the Adventures of Sergeant Ballentine. She enjoyed herself immensely. It was the best game she had ever played. The vision of a vicarious career as the wife of a great politician was now always in the back of her mind.
Eleanor, with her superior intellectual equipment, might laugh at Lydia's late discovery of the political field; but Lydia's knowledge was not theoretical and remote, like Eleanor's. It was alive, vivified by her energy and coined into the daily action of her life. With half Eleanor's brains she was twice as effective.
She admired Albee deeply, almost dangerously, and she wanted to admire him more. She enjoyed all the symbols of his power. She liked the older, more important men of her acquaintance to come suing to her for an opportunity of meeting Albee socially. She liked to watch other women trying to draw him away from her. She even liked the way the traffic policemen would let her car through when he was in it. She liked all these things, not from vanity, as many girls would have liked them, but because they constantly held before her eyes the picture of Albee as a superman. And if Albee were a superman the problem of her life was solved. Then everything would be simple—to give her youth and beauty and money, her courage and knowledge of the world to making him supreme. It was true that he had not as yet asked her to marry him—had not even made love to her, unless admiration is love-making—but to Lydia that was a secondary consideration. The first thing was to make up her own mind.
She had two great problems to face. At first he did not want to go out at all—did not want to enter her field. He appeared to think, as so many Americans do, that there was something trivial, almost immoral, in meeting your fellow creatures except in professional relations. The second problem was worse, that having overcome his reluctance, he began to like it too much, to take it too seriously. He had never had time for it before, he said, but actually he must have felt excluded from it, either at college, or as a young man in the legislature of his state.
The first time he went to the opera with her—he was genuinely fond of music—she noticed this. Lydia's box was next to Mrs. Little's. The newspapers made her name impressive, but her slim white-haired presence made her more so. Lydia herself admired her, and if ever she thought of her own old age she thought she would like to be like Mrs. Little—a wish very unlikely of realization, for Mrs. Little had been molded by traditional obligations and sacrifices to duties which Lydia had never acknowledged.