After a moment’s pause Constance, still with a heightened colour, continued:
“I have seen Mr. Crane several times this winter—not only in my own house, but in others. Whenever I am with him I am consumed with pity for him.”
“He does not need your pity now,” said Thorndyke, grimly. “It is more needed by his senior Senator, who is the fly-wheel of the political machine in his State. The old gentleman, I know, is at this minute walking the floor in his committee-room and gnashing his teeth over Crane’s success. The senior Senator took Crane up, sent him to Congress, and thought he had secured a really efficient understrapper. I don’t think Crane will fill that place after to-day’s triumph, and the senior Senator knows it, and has got to discover means, if possible, to garrote Crane politically before the next Congressional campaign.”
“I see,” replied Constance, who was only interested in the subject because she saw Thorndyke was. “Mr. Crane, by virtue of making your speech, has got beyond the control of his master. By the way—I am so ignorant of Congressional matters—how can I get the Congressional Record sent me every day?”
“You have already got it—by mentioning to me that you wished it. It is one of my few privileges. I am glad to do at least that much for you.”
Thorndyke heard himself saying these things without his own volition in the least. If Constance Maitland were willing at this moment to give up a fortune for poverty with him, would he accept the sacrifice? Never. How could a woman of her mature age, nurtured in luxury, descend to poverty—for poverty is the lot of every member of Congress who wishes to live in something more than mere decency on his salary. And yet Thorndyke, at every opportunity, had assured Constance Maitland of his unforgetting, of his tender, recollections—in short, of his love. Nor had she showed any unwillingness to listen. It is not a woman’s first love for which she wrecks her life; it is her last love—that final struggle for supremacy. There can be no more after that. Sappho, on the great white rock of Mitylene, knew this and perished.
Some thoughts like this came into Constance Maitland’s mind, and, driving away her colour, restored to her the lately vanished years. Silence fell between them for a while, until Constance roused herself, and, affecting cheerfulness, said:
“I shall study the Congressional Record with interest. Everything in one’s own country is of interest after a long and painful exile.”
“You should read Lord Bolingbroke’s defence of exile,” replied Thomdyke, moving a little nearer to her, and resting his elbow on the back of the bench so that he could look into her pensive, changing face.
“And yet, I daresay, Lord Bolingbroke pined in his exile. Nobody believed him when he said he did not mind. Mine, however, was complete. My uncle, von Hesselt, who was an honourable man in his way, thought he was carrying out my aunt’s wishes by keeping me wholly away from all Americans and wholly with foreigners.”