It was late one Thursday afternoon and he had been speaking on an important matter for more than an hour, endeavoring to close up a question which threatened to be of international significance, and, thoroughly fagged, he finally left the floor of the House amid a tremendous outburst of applause. As usual the galleries had been packed to hear him, and he managed to make his way out with many delays, stopped on all sides by members and personal friends, eager to congratulate him on another great speech.
Once out of the lobby, he was crossing the corridor on his way to a committee-room when he heard his name spoken, and turned, to see Margaret detach herself from a party of fashionables who had been in the Diplomatic Gallery, and come toward him. As they met he was immediately aware of the change in her that a few weeks of absence had made sharply apparent. She was extremely pale and her eyes seemed abnormally large and shining under the brim of her immense picture hat, her elaborate dress only accentuating the slightness of her figure. She held out her hand without smiling. “I want to speak to you,” she said, almost with an air of command, “where can we go?”
He turned, hesitating a moment as to some suitable spot, arrested by the thought that Margaret’s presence there or anywhere, alone with him, would be so much fuel to the fire.
But she solved the problem for him. “Come outside,” she said; “it’s heavenly on the terrace, the sun is setting. Besides, I can’t breathe here in these corridors—heavens, where do they get their tobacco?”
“Not where you buy your Egyptians,” Fox laughed.
She shrugged her shoulders. “The doctor says I mustn’t smoke any more,” she said, “but I shall.”
“The doctor?” Fox cast a startled glance at her white face; “what’s the matter, Margaret?”
“A cigarette heart, I suppose!” she replied laughing, and then as the smile died on her lips an expression of dull misery fell like a veil over her features.
They had crossed the Rotunda together and gone out by the same door where Allestree had waited months before. As they emerged upon the terrace they were enfolded in a radiant atmosphere, the sun was setting, and the whole western façade of the Capitol, the fluted columns of the loggia before the old library rooms, the long rows of shining windows, the magnificent arch of the dome, were bathed in the glowing light which seemed to flood the world. There was still a little snow on the sheltered slopes of the terrace and under the trees, but the promise of spring was in the air and in the deep blue of the sky above them. Margaret stopped abruptly and stood looking down at the panorama at their feet; absorbed in her own emotions, she did not immediately perceive the expression of her companion’s face; it was one of extreme reluctance, of reserve, almost of resentment. He had a man’s hatred of a scene, of being “talked about,” and he knew that such a circumstance as their tête-à-tête at such a time could scarcely escape unnoticed. He was annoyed and disturbed, but for once she was blind to those potent signs.
Keen as Margaret’s perceptions were, she shared with other women the passionate blindness to change in another when her own heart was clamoring to be satisfied; her vision was warped by one aspect of it all; she remembered those moments, long past, of comradeship and sympathy and passion on his part; she remembered and she refused to believe that change was even possible.