The clerk turned briskly and looked at the pigeon-holes for the keys. "I think she is. Send up a card?"
True, he hadn't thought of that. He had no cards. He received one from the clerk that looked as if it had done duty before, and scrawled his name upon it, and gave it to the insolent little darky who served as "Front."
"Tell her I'd like to see her just a few minutes."
On the stairs he tried to prepare what he should say to her. His mouth already felt dry, and his brain was a mere swirl of gray and white matter. Almost without knowing how, he found himself seated in the ladies' parlor, to which the boy had conducted him. It was a barren little place, in spite of its excessively florid gilt and crimson paper, and its ostentatious harsh red-plush furniture.
His heart sent the blood into his throat till it ached with the tension. His lips quivered and turned pale as he heard the slow sweep of a woman's dress, and there she stood before him, with smiling face and extended hand. "Are you Mr. Talcott? Did you want to see me?"
She had the frank gesture and ready smile a kindly man would have used. Instantly his brain cleared, his heart ceased to pound, and the numbness left his limbs. He forgot himself utterly. He only saw and heard her. He found himself saying:
"I wanted to come in and tell you how much I liked your speech last night, and how much I liked a speech you made up at Rock River, at the grange picinic."
"Oh, did you hear me up there? That was one of my old speeches. I've quite outgrown that now. You'll be shocked to know I don't believe in a whole lot of things that I used to believe in." As she talked, she looked at him precisely as one man looks at another, without the slightest false modesty or coquettishness. She evidently considered him a fellow-student on social affairs. "I'm glad you liked my talk on the woman question. It was dreadfully radical to the most of my audience."
"It was right," Bradley said, and their minds seemed to come together at that point as if by an electrical shock. "I never thought of it before. Women have been kept down. We do claim to know better what she ought to do than she knows herself. The trouble is we men don't think about it at all. We need to have you tell us these things."
"Yes, that's true. As soon as I made that discovery I began talking the woman question. One radicalism opened the way to the other. Being a radical is like opening the door to the witches. Are you one?" she asked, with a sudden smile, "I mean a radical, not a witch."