Crane went upon his way gloomily, turning over in his mind his conversation with Thorndyke, and all the difficulties of his situation, which were accentuated by his being in Washington. The strong fancy which Senator Bicknell had taken to Annette made everything harder. It seemed as if all those things which might be reckoned an unmixed good for an honest man were a burden and a perplexity to him, Julian Crane.
Thinking these uncomfortable thoughts, he found himself at the entrance to the big apartment house, and went to his own quarters.
They were small and cramped, but the locality was good and the outlook pleasant. Annette and the two children met him with smiles. The children had grown acquainted with him and had become fairly fond of him. As for Annette, she had never, in all her married life, so striven to help her husband as in the last few months, when she had seen that he was troubled and suspected that he was engaged in wrong-doing. All her pity, all her loyalty as a wife, had risen within her. She had gradually abandoned the attitude of reserve which she had maintained toward him ever since that first unfortunate experience in Washington so long ago. She reproached herself, as the good always do, for not having been better. Had she given him more of her confidence and sought his more, she might now be in a position to help him, or at least to sympathise with his trouble, whatever it might be. But her conscience should never upbraid her again for want of sympathy and tenderness to him. He might tell her of his perplexities, or he might keep them to himself, she would be all tenderness and softness to him. And then the hope was born and lived in her heart, which every neglected wife has, that calamities of the soul as well as the heart might bring her husband once more to her side. For Annette had never ceased to love her husband—and loving spells forgiveness with a woman.
Crane dutifully delivered Senator Bicknell’s and Thorndyke’s messages, and Annette’s eyes sparkled with pleasure. She felt an increase of courage. She thought Crane must have seen that she had been a help, not a hinderance to him, socially and personally, when she had been given a chance, and she meant to show him that she could hold her own in Washington as well as in Circleville.
A week or two passed in all the gay confusion of the beginning of the season in Washington. Thorndyke had watched his chance to call on Constance Maitland. Carefully avoiding her usual day at home, he had called on a peculiarly raw and disagreeable afternoon, very late, when he felt sure that she must have returned from her daily drive. He found her in her drawing-room, which was dusky, although it was not yet six o’clock, with a bright fire leaping high and making the charming room bright with its ruddy glow.
Constance, wrapped in rich dark furs, her cheeks tingling with the fresh cold air without, her eyes sparkling, was standing before the blazing fire. She was unaffectedly glad to see Thorndyke, and he felt that sense of quiet well-being which always came upon him when he was with her in her own house. They had much to talk about. Constance took off her furs and the long, rich cloak which enveloped her, and sat down on the deep, inviting sofa, and motioned Thorndyke to her side.
Among the persons they spoke of were Julian Crane and Annette. Thorndyke volunteered the suggestion that Crane was passing through some sort of a crisis—he was so changed, so silent where he was formerly talkative, so full of vague exultation and of equally vague depression. Thorndyke had seen Annette and the children. Annette had asked to be remembered to Miss Maitland, and Constance replied that she should call at once to see Mrs. Crane. She was not particularly interested in Julian Crane’s crises, except that she said, woman fashion, that he ought to be more attentive to his wife.
Thorndyke then mentioned that Senator Mulligan was in town, at which they both laughed. But soon the conversation got down to the you and I—the books each had read, the thoughts each had pondered, the places each had been. Constance had remained continuously at Malvern Court from June until late in November. She had had a succession of house-parties during the summer, but in the golden autumn she had been quite alone.
“It was the sweetest, the most peaceful life you can imagine,” she said, thoughtfully. “All the world was shut out, except Virginia cousins, but I even escaped most of them. All day I was out in the woods and lanes, riding or driving or walking, and in the evening, with a wood fire, a book, a piano, and a lamp—it was company enough, yet it was solitude itself. It was like Omar’s shady tree and loaf of bread and jug of wine and book of verse.”
“And thou,” added Thorndyke, under his breath. He was watching her with a silent rapture which possessed him on meeting her after an absence. She surely had the softest and sweetest voice in the world, and those charming tricks of pronunciation—she called solitude “solee-tude” and piano “pe-arno,” and was quite unconscious of it, and bitterly denied any difference between her speech and Thorndyke’s. Constance was conscious of the adoring look in Thorndyke’s eyes; she had heard the one suggestive word; perhaps it was that which caused a happy smile to flicker for a moment on her lips, revealing the faint, elusive dimple in her cheek, but she continued as if she had neither heard, nor seen, nor understood.