"Are you crazy?" Mrs. Latimer spoke with scorn.
"No one will see us," he pleaded. "I can pick you up where you used to live. You can wear a veil if you like. What do we care if we do meet somebody we know? You belong to the smart set—you can do anything you like." Charlie laughed loud.
"My dear friend," Eva began, cynically, believing that her position had so far made her exempt from comment, "the world is too suspicious. No man and woman can foregather without some pure soul interpreting that companionship to its own satisfaction. Besides, I expect Arthur any day now. He neither writes nor wires me just when he can come."
"You'll never do a thing to please me!" cried Blair, hotly. "I am the one who must grant favors. I——"
"Aren't you a man, and therefore to be compliant?" returned Eva, her smile tempering her insolence. Then, pleading, although her eyes grew no softer: "Only one thing do I ask, Senator. Please, please grant me that! Don't you care for me more than for Senator Danvers? Break your promise to him—for me." She was very enticing as she bent towards him, and he was conscious of the faint perfume about her.
"Mr. Burroughs needs your vote," she went on, persuasively; "and if you give it to him—as I've told you a hundred times—he has promised that he will provide for Arthur; and you like Arthur."
"And what do I get out of it?"
"You'll please me," was the caressing answer. "And—I never thought of it before," she hastened to add, as the scar grew more conspicuous—a sure register of his emotions—"why not ask Mr. Burroughs to get you to Berlin, too—as first secretary or something, if we go there?" She must throw him some encouragement. "I hate Helena. You do yourself. If we were in Berlin, we'd be where life is—a whirl of——"
"Madness," Senator Blair finished her sentence for her, thickly. "I do not have to go away from Helena for that sensation!" He lost control of himself. "You drive me mad, Eva! You are more tempting than ever! Give me one kiss—one—and I'll vote for Burroughs till hell freezes over!" The language of the frontier returned, in his abandon.
"Not now!" The temptress was thoroughly alarmed. She had thought to control any situation, but—Charlie's eyes—so near her own! "Perhaps—when you have voted for——" She must secure this man's vote for Burroughs, even if she bartered her self-respect.