"May we not go home soon?"
He looks at the flushed, weary face, beautiful in its ennui and excitement, and says:
"At once if you wish it," and suddenly the desire possesses him to have her in the carriage, alone, quite to himself, in his arms, and he seems a little impatient while Everet folds her wrap about her, and is asking which is her "day."
Helen says with an airy little informality that she has no day for her friends—the days are theirs.
As they step out into the cold air, Braine draws Helen's furs still closer about her throat. There is a tenderness and passion in his action that she has missed these last weeks. It delights her, and causes the hot blood to surge over her face and neck, leaving her in a quivering little ecstacy, for a moment after she is in the carriage.
Braine, standing outside, is pushing her gown about her, and pulling the rug over her lap as he directs the coachman. And Helen is saying in husky little trebles, so that only he hears:
"Ed.—Ed."
Some one at this moment runs down the steps to say some nearly forgotten thing to Braine, and as he talks he is acknowledging Helen's little appeals by covert pressure of the hand that is inside the coupé. Finally he gets in, and closes the door.
As they roll away, Braine draws her into his arms. It seems to both that they have been waiting all night for this moment. After a time, Braine says:
"I have never loved you more than at this moment. I believe until to-night I have never fully realized how magnificent you are. You are not where you belong. You are not where you shall be. I want to see you there," nodding his head in the direction of the White House.