They were silent then, till suddenly she appealed to him:
“Oh, Morley, I’ve got to ask strange men, men I never met, to vote against it! How am I ever!”
She shuddered.
“It’s all very strange,” Vernon said.
XIV
THEY walked briskly down the sloping street under the railroad bridge and then up the little hill whereon sits the Capitol of Illinois. They could see the big flag high up on the dome standing out in the prairie wind, and the little flags on the House wing and the Senate wing whipping joyously, sprightly symbols of the sitting of both houses.
Now and then they heard cheers from the House wing, where the legislative riot that ends a session was already beginning. They passed into the dark and cool corridors of the State House, then up to the third floor, where members and messenger-boys, correspondents and page-boys, rushed always across from one house to the other, swinging hurriedly around the brass railing of the rotunda. It seemed that the tide of legislative life was just then setting in toward the Senate.
“Oh, Morley,” whispered Amelia, forgetting his offense, and clinging close to him, “I can’t go in there, really I can’t.”
“Nonsense,” said Vernon, “come on. I’ll deliver you to Mrs. Hodge-Lathrop in a minute; then you’ll be perfectly safe. Besides, you have your lobbying to do.”
They reached the Senate entrance, and the doorkeeper, seeing a senator, opened a way through the crowd for their passage. There was confusion everywhere, the nervous and excited hum of voices from the floor, from the vestibule, from the galleries, from all around. And just as they stepped up to the raised floor whereon the desks of senators are placed, the gavel fell, and stillness with it. They saw the lieutenant-governor leaning over his desk, studying a slip of paper he held in his hand.