THE surprise had leaped to Vernon’s eyes again at the final impression of perfection made by her voice, and the surprise changed to a regret of lost and irreclaimable opportunity when he reflected that he had lived for years near this woman lawyer and yet never had seen her once in all that time. When Miss Greene turned to look him in the face again, after the others were gone, Vernon grew suddenly bashful, like a big boy. He felt his face flame hotly. He had been meditating some drawing-room speech; he had already turned in his mind a pretty sentence in which there was a discreet reference to Portia; Vernon was just at the age for classical allusions. But when he saw her blue eyes fixed on him and read the utter seriousness in them he knew that compliments would all be lost.
“I am one of your constituents, Senator Vernon,” she began, “and I am down, frankly, lobbying for this resolution.”
“And we both,” he replied, “are, I believe, members of the Cook County bar. Strange, isn’t it, that two Chicago lawyers should have to wait until they are in Springfield to meet?”
“Not altogether,” she said. “It is not so very strange—my practice is almost wholly confined to office work; I am more of a counselor than a barrister. I have not often appeared in court; in fact I prefer not to do so; I am—well, just a little timid in that part of the work.”
The femininity of it touched him. He might have told her that he did not often appear in court himself, but he was new enough at the bar to have to practise the dissimulation of the young professional man. He indulged himself in the temptation to allow her to go undeceived, though with a pang he remembered that her practice, from all that he had heard, must be much more lucrative than his. Something of the pretty embarrassment she felt before courts and juries was evidently on her in this her first appearance in the Senate, but she put it away; her breast rose with the deep breath of resolution she drew, and she straightened to look him once more in the eyes.
“But about this resolution, Senator Vernon; I must not take up too much of your time. If you will give me your objections to it perhaps I may be able to explain them away. We should very much like to have your support.”
Vernon scarcely knew what to reply; such objections as he might have found at other times—the old masculine objections to women’s voting and meddling in politics—had all disappeared at sight of this remarkable young woman who wished to vote herself; he could not think of one of them, try as he would. His eyes were on the rose.
“Perhaps your objections are merely prejudices,” she ventured boldly, in her eyes a latent twinkle that disturbed him.
“I confess, Miss Greene,” he began, trying to get back something of his senatorial dignity, such as state senatorial dignity is, “that I have not devoted much thought to the subject; I am indeed rather ashamed to acknowledge that I did not even know the amendment was coming up to-day, until I was—ah—so delightfully reminded by your rose.”
He raised the rose to inhale its fragrance. She made no reply, but she kept her eyes on him, and her gaze compelled him to go on. It was hard for him to go on, for it was now but a struggle against the formality of a surrender that had been inevitable from the beginning. But his man’s pride forced him to delay it as long as possible.