She gave him the truth, knowing it to be better than diplomacy. “I told her that I couldn’t make you. But perhaps if you knew I wanted it——” She paused inquiringly.
He leaned towards her across the table. “Ask me, prettily, and I’ll do it.”
“Really?” She laughed, blushed and did it. “Will you go—my love?”
“Could I say ‘no’ to that?” He radiated satisfaction. “Do you know how charming you are, Jane?”
“Am I? But it is nice of you to go. I know how you’ll hate it.”
“Not if you are there. And now, who else are asked?”
“Oh, Mrs. Laramore and Eloise Harper and a lot of others. Lucy says she’ll be like a fish out of water, but Delafield has made up his mind that his friends shan’t think that he’s ashamed of her.”
When their ices came and their coffee, Frederick said, “I’ve got to spend a half-hour in a committee room. Shall I take you up to the Senate Gallery?”
“No—there’s nothing interesting, is there? I’ll wait in Statuary Hall.”
Jane loved the marble figures that circled the Hall. Years ago there had not been so many. They had been, then, perhaps, more distinctive. As a child, she had chosen as her favorites the picturesque Colonials, the frontiersmen in leather tunics and coonskin caps. She had never liked the statesmen in stiff shirts and frock coats, although she had admitted their virtues. Even the incongruous classic draperies were more in keeping with the glamour which the past flung over the men who had given their best to America.