"I am sorry, but I've just telephoned Bonny that I'd call for her."
The old bruise in my heart throbbed while I turned away; but the pain instead of melting my pride, only increased the terrible reticence which I wore now as an armour. Her face, above the heavy furs that seemed dragging her down, had in it something of the soft, uncompromising obstinacy of Miss Matoaca. So delicate she appeared that I could almost have broken her body in my grasp; yet I knew that she would not yield though I brought the full strength of my will to bear in the struggle. In the old days, doubtless, Matoaca Bland, then in her pride and beauty, had faced the General with this same firmness which was as soft as velvet yet as inflexible as steel.
A few days after this, the great man, who had grown at last too feeble for an active part in "affairs," resigned the presidency of the South Midland, and retired, as he said, "to enjoy his second childhood."
"It's about time for Theophilus to bring around his box of ants, I reckon," he observed, and added seriously after a moment, "Yes, there's no use trying to prop up a fallen tree, Ben. I've had a long life and a good life, and I am willing to draw out. It's a losing game any way you play it, when it comes to that. I've thought a lot about it, my boy, these last weeks, and I tell you the only thing that sticks by you to the last is the love of a woman. If you need a woman when you are young, you need her ten thousand times more when you're old. If Miss Matoaca had married me, we'd both of us have been a long ways better off."
That night I told Sally of the resignation, and repeated to her a part of the conversation. The sentimental allusion to Miss Matoaca she treated with scorn, but after a few thoughtful moments she said:—
"You've always wanted to be president of the South Midland more than anything in the world?"
"More than anything in the world," I admitted absently.
"There's a chance now?"
"Yes, I suppose there's a chance now."
She said nothing more, but the next morning as I was getting into my overcoat, she sent me word that she wished to speak to me again before I went out.