“I wish you were susceptible to flattery,” she said irrelevantly, “and I’d tell you I thought you could give the bunch of them cards and spades.”
He patted her hand and then, apparently feeling that insufficient, turned her face up to his and kissed her. She flushed a little at the casual caress, and then turned to look out of the window. The street lamps showed on her face that little wistful, half appealing expression which was making her piquancy so much more mysterious.
“Do you like it all, Matthew?”
“I’m interested, Fliss. I’m finding out about lots of things I wondered about. Some are true and some aren’t. Of course, you mustn’t expect me to do much for years. I’m pretty crude. I’ve got to learn.”
“Crude! You should have heard the enlightened and important Senator Gates! He couldn’t be much cruder.”
“He has other assets. Don’t expect too much, Fliss.”
It was shortly after that that the Allenbys dined with Senator and Mrs. Gates, and from that dinner several important invitations fell the way of Fliss. It was, of course, not only on her own account. There were many people who felt that it was very much worth while to cultivate young Senator Allenby, and tipped their wives off to that effect.
Fliss began her campaign in December shortly after the opening of the session. She was quite as busy weeding out undesirable invitations and discouraging worthless acquaintances as she was angling for the right ones. The thing that surprised her was to find out that the worthless acquaintances included among their number so many people of superficial distinction, but distinction, as she came to find out, that impressed no one except the people on the street. One couldn’t go on the basis of clothes. The smart dressers too often didn’t belong and some one whose suit might be last season’s and whose hair was gray and worn without a Marcel might be a powerful or a charming person—one to cultivate. Her old training in being “nice” to the mothers of her high school friends stood her in good stead here. She knew how to treat older women, what sort of flattery they preferred and what sort of deference they exacted.
Always she watched for Matthew’s approval. She was interested in seeing the way so many Washington women followed every step of their husbands’ progress, and knew how to talk about it and how not to talk about it. She was not informed enough to get much of a grasp of big happenings, but she had an uncanny gift for getting at the pet phrases of people and never blundered as she repeated them. Then, too, she did not talk much and she read the newspapers for an hour every morning.
She was flowering, growing up, out of the little social climber she had been into the woman of social strength that she meant to be. Brilliant, colorful, utilitarian in every phase of her philosophy, except in that weakness which showed again and again in her efforts to reach Matthew.