Selma, who had provided a slight refection, handed him a cup of tea. "I feel sure that you will be chosen," she said. "See if I am not right. When is the election?"
"In six weeks. Six weeks from to-morrow."
"Then you will go to Washington to live?"
"Not until the fourth of March."
"I envy you. If I were a man I should prefer success in politics to anything else."
He was silent for a moment. Then he said, "Will you help me to achieve success? Will you go with me to Washington as my wife?"
His courtship had been formal and elaborate, but his declaration was signally simple and to the point. Selma noticed that the cup in his hand trembled. While she kept her eyes lowered, as women are supposed to do at such moments, she was wondering whether she loved him as much as she had loved Wilbur? Not so ardently, but more worthily, she concluded, for he seemed to her to fulfil her maturer ideal of strong and effective manhood, and to satisfy alike her self-respect and her physical fancy. A man of his type would not split hairs, but proceed straight toward the goal of his ambition without fainting or wavering. Why should she not satisfy her renewed craving to be yoked to a kindred spirit and companion who appreciated her true worth?
"I cannot believe," he was saying, "that my words are a surprise to you. You can scarcely have failed to understand that I admired you extremely. I have delayed to utter my desire to make you my wife because I did not dare to cherish too fondly the hope that the love inspired in me could be reciprocated, and that you would consent to unite your life to mine and trust your happiness to my keeping. If I may say so, we are no boy and girl. We understand the solemn significance of marriage; what it imports and what it demands. Of late I have ventured to dream that the sympathy in ideas and identity of purpose which exist between us might be the trustworthy sign of a spiritual bond which we could not afford to ignore. I feel that without you the joy and power of my life will be incomplete. With you at my side I shall aspire to great things. You are to me the embodiment of what is charming and serviceable in woman."
Selma looked up. "I like you very much, Mr. Lyons. You, in your turn, must have realized that, I think. As you say, we are no boy and girl. You meant by that, too, that we both have been married before. I have had two husbands, and I did not believe that I could ever think of marriage again. I don't wish you to suppose that my last marriage was not happy. Mr. Littleton was an earnest, talented man, and devoted to me. Yet I cannot deny that in spite of mutual love our married life was not a success—a success as a contribution to accomplishment. That nearly broke my heart, and he—he died from lack of the physical and mental vigor which would have made so much difference. I am telling you this because I wish you to realize that if I should consent to comply with your wishes, it would be because I was convinced that true accomplishment—the highest accomplishment—would result from the union of our lives as the result of our riper experience. If I did not believe, Mr. Lyons, that man and woman as we are—no longer boy and girl—a more perfect scheme of happiness, a grander conception of the meaning of life than either of us had entertained was before us, I would not consider your offer for one moment."
"Yes, yes, I understand," Lyons exclaimed eagerly. "I share your belief implicitly. It was what I would have said only—"