“You don’t mean, Morley, that you are sorry it didn’t pass, do you?”
“It puts me in rather an awkward position,” he said. “I suppose you know that.”
“I don’t see how,” Amelia replied.
“Well,” Vernon explained, “to stand for a measure of that importance, and then at the final, critical moment, to fail—”
“Oh, I see!” said Amelia, moving away from him on the couch. “Of course, if you regret the time, if you’d rather have been over in the Senate than to have been with me—why, of course!” She gave a little deprecating laugh.
Vernon leaned impulsively toward her.
“But, dear,” he said, “you don’t understand!”
“And after your begging me to come down to Springfield to see you!” Amelia said. Her eyes were fixed on the elevator, and just at that moment the car came rushing down the shaft and swished itself to a stop just when, it seemed, it should have shattered itself to pieces at the bottom. The elevator boy clanged the iron door back, and Maria Greene stepped out.
“There she is now!” said Amelia, raising her head to see. Miss Greene paused a moment to reply to the greeting of some one of the politicians who stopped to speak to her.
Amelia’s nose was elevated.