In the voices, the colloquialisms—the very colour of thought—spoke the spirit of the South—not the Old South, perhaps, yet the offspring of a mother who had passed on much of herself.
From the log cabin to this dinner seemed to him the measure of his progress thus far. It was as though with seven-league boots he had crossed the centuries!
Behind him lay a boyhood that belonged to the little sectionalism of the backwoods settlement. Here was the widening circle of the life evolved out of it, yet still a circle of sectionalism. What lay beyond?
In his imagination the young Kentuckian saw the dome of the capitol at Washington, the nerve centre of the nation, where functioned the broad affairs of statecraft. Above the dome an afterglow hung in the sky, and in it shone a single star—the evening star. That, of course, was a long way off, yet from Louisville to Washington seemed a shorter and smoother road than from the laurel thickets to Louisville. Youth was his, and a resolution forged and tempered. Ambition was his, and the incentive of a beacon whose light he renewed whenever he looked into the violet eyes that were not far from his own.
The race would not, of course, be easy. There would be the heart-testing smother of effort before the prize was won, but the future lay open, and he coveted no victory of unwrung withers and unwearied lungs.
Thank God, the one thing without which he must fail was surely his: the loyalty of the woman he loved.
Anne had been unusually quiet and grave this evening, but he had arrived on a late train and had as yet had no opportunity for talk with her alone. That would come later.
When he had driven home with her, he followed her into the old parlour, with its ripe portraits from the brush of Jouett, and the cheery blaze of its open fire. With her opera cloak thrown across his arm, he watched her go over and stand on the hearth, while the firelight played on the ivory whiteness and the satin softness of her neck and shoulders, and made a nimbus about her bright hair.
"You're not wearing your string of pearls tonight," he smiled; and she smiled, too, but not happily.
"No," she said. "I thought I wouldn't."