The rage and shame that possessed him seemed to overpower Crane for a moment, and he covered his face with his hands. Then he dashed them down and continued:
“Of course I could have made a good showing in the race in January, and after my success of yesterday I believe I could have won. Senator Bicknell is not by any means the czar in the State which he would wish people to believe. But because Sanders dangled before my eyes the bauble of the appointment to the Senate—a present mess of pottage—and because I owed money I could not pay, I gave up the finest prospect of success any man of my age has had for forty years!”
Crane struck the arm of his chair with his clinched fist. His furious and sombre eyes showed the agony of his disappointment.
“As soon as it was done I knew my folly, and since then I have been almost like a madman. I went to my room to recover myself before going to the Capitol, and managed not to betray myself while I was there. But I couldn’t stand the strain until adjournment; I had to come to you.”
Constance sat looking at him; pity, annoyance, and a kind of disgust struggled within her. This, then, was politics. Accomplished woman of the world that she was, this natural and untutored man thoroughly disconcerted her. If only she had not felt such pity for him! And while she was contemplating the spectacle of these elemental passions of hatred, disappointment, revenge, and self-seeking, Crane’s eyes, fixed on her, lost some of their fury, and became more melancholy than angry, and he continued, as if thinking aloud:
“Suddenly I felt the desire to see you. You would know how insane was my folly, but you would not despise me for it. That’s the greatest power in the world a woman has over a man: when he can show her all his heart, and she will pity him without scorn or contempt. Ah, if Fate had given me a wife like you, I could have reached the heights of greatness!”
At those words Constance Maitland moved a little closer to him so that she could bring him under the full effect of her large, clear gaze.
“I think,” she said, in a cool, soft voice, with a rebuke in it, but without contempt, “that you are forgetting yourself strangely. I have often noticed in you a want of reticence. You should begin now to cultivate reticence. What you have just said has in it something insulting to me as well as to your wife—a person you seem to have forgotten. As for the political arrangement which you regret so much, I can only say that it seems to me to have been cold-blooded and unfeeling on both sides to a remarkable degree. You have spoken plainly; I speak plainly.”
Constance leaned back quietly in her chair to watch the effect of what she had said. She felt then a hundred years older than Crane, who was older than she, and who knew both law and politics well, but was a child in the science of knowing the world and the people in it—a science in which Constance Maitland excelled. But even her rebuke had a fascination for him. No other woman had ever rebuked him—his wife least of all.
“Do you complain of me,” he said, “for telling you my weaknesses, my misfortunes? Don’t you see that what you have just told me is proof of all I have said? You see my faults, you tell me of them, you inspire me with a desire to correct them. No other woman ever did so much for me. Is it forbidden to any one to utter a regret?”