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.