Vassar lifted his hand and she saw that it was trembling violently.
“Your decision is final?” he asked.
“Absolutely—”
“Then all I can say is,” he responded, “may God save you from ever seeing the vision my soul has dreamed today!”
She smiled graciously in response to his evident suffering.
“I shall not see it,” was the firm answer. “Your fears are groundless. I will be a delegate to the first Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World which this war will create.”
He turned to go, paused, and slowly asked:
“And I may not hope to see you occasionally? You know that I love you always, right or wrong—”
She shook her head and gazed out of the window for a moment on the majestic shaft of the Washington Monument white and luminous against the azure skies of Virginia. Her voice was tender, dreamlike, impersonal.
“Our lives were never quite so far apart as now—”