"I'd rather like to."
"Well, you shall. I think men are the indiscreetest people on the earth." And then, with that same suppressed excitement, she added, "All except one."
He made a movement toward a sofa—a movement she misinterpreted.
"O Gavan, don't go in just yet! He's got cart-loads of people to talk to, and I haven't anybody. You see, it must be somebody that as good as knows already. There isn't any one but you, is there? Of course, what I came for was to see the President. Every good American wants to see the President. So I done it—" she laughed as she threw up her head—"like Huck Finn."
"Not, I gather, with the hoi polloi?"
"The what?" But she didn't stop. "Oh, the trouble I had! I wrote and I wrote. I might just as well have been in an effete monarchy trying to approach the throne on my hands and knees. It made me mad, I can tell you. I said so. Told Senator Harned so. He's a friend of my mother's. But Senator Harned wanted me to give him the papers. Imagine!"
"Julian's manifesto?"
"Everything. As if I would! I've come all the way from Europe for a personal interview, and a personal interview I've got to have, or—well, something would have to be done." She wagged her head.
"I see. Something with boiling oil in it."
"Oh, they came to their senses at last, this very morning." She shone in the refulgence of the late-risen sun. "But do you know, up to the very last minute I had to be as firm as the Washington monument. He sent a Private Secretary to see me. And the Private Secretary tried to make me 'abandon the matter.' Called it 'the matter'! I denied that 'matter' was the main object. I must see the President. I was an American. Hadn't every American the right to see the President? Every American had the right to wring his poor hand in the presence of hundreds of other Americans. 'Very well,' I said, 'if I mayn't see him, I'll tell Senator Harned that I applied and sent in his letter, and waited for days, and was turned away at last.