"You are heartless! Don't argue with me. I hate argument when my emotions feel as if they had dynamite in them. I could sit down on the floor of the Senate and scream until war was declared. I hate Senator North. He never moved a muscle of his face during that entire terrible recital. He hardly looked interested. He is a heartless brute."
"He is not heartless. He fears everlasting complications if we go to war with Spain, the expenditure of hundreds of millions, as one result of those complications, and danger to the Constitution. The statesman thinks of his own country first—"
"I won't listen! I won't! I won't! Oh, I never thought I could get so excited about anything. I believe I'm going to have nervous prostration and I sha'n't see you again till war is declared. So there!"
The carriage stopped at her house, and she jumped out and ran up the steps. She kept her word, and it was weeks before Betty saw her to speak to again.
"If intelligent people get into that condition," thought Betty, "what can be expected of the fools? And the fools are more dangerous in the United States than elsewhere, because they are just bright enough to think that they know more than the Almighty ever knew in His best days."
A few days later she was crossing Statuary Hall on her way back from the House Gallery; whither she had gone during an Executive Session of the Senate, when she met Senator North. His face illuminated as he saw her, and they both turned spontaneously and went to a bench behind the immortal ones of the Republic, who in dust and marble were happier than their inheritors to-day.
"I am thinking of coming down here to live, renting a Committee Room," said Betty. "It is the only place where I do not have my opinion asked and where I do not quarrel with my friends. Molly is sure I shall be taken for a lobbyist, and if people were not too absorbed to notice me, I think I should engage a companion; but as it is, I believe I am safe enough. I have had this simple brown serge made, on purpose."
"There is not the least danger of your motives being misconstrued, and the Capitol is swarming with women, all the time. They seem to regard it as a sort of National Theatre, where the most exciting denouement may take place any minute. I fancy they have come from all over the country for the satisfaction of being able to say, for the rest of their lives, that they were in at the death. The poor Capitol has become a sort of asylum for wandering lunatics."
Betty laughed. "I feel calmer here than anywhere else, especially now that Molly has gone over to the Cubans since the publication of that speech. I suspect it has made a good many other converts. I didn't think the tide of excitement in the country could rise any higher, but it appears to have needed that last straw. Have you any hope left?"
"None whatever. The politicians in both parties are rushing the President off his feet and inflaming the country at the same time. Sincere sympathizers with Cuba, like Burleigh, are holding their peace until the President shall have declared himself, but there is very little patriotism amongst politicians desirous of re-election. If Spain was a quick-thinking nation and was not stultified by a mulish obstinacy for which the word 'pride' is a euphemism, or if the President could hypnotize the country for six months, all would be well, but I do not look for a miracle. I have done all I can. I have persuaded my own State to keep quiet, and that has lessened the pressure a little; and I have persuaded no less than eight of our bellicose members to say nothing on the floor of the Senate until the President has sent in his message,—that delay is necessary if we are to meet war with any sort of preparation. That is all I can do, for I don't care to speak on the subject again, to bring it up in the Senate until it no longer can be held down. But I have said a good deal in the lobby."