“But we’ve won every time,” she said solemnly. “You’ve never been beaten, Burt. Don’t you see what an advantage that is, now? You’ve been going up, and up, and up.”
“The Senate’s a rather high plateau, at that.”
“But not the high mountain. Oh, Burt, think of it! It seems almost unbelievable, and yet I’ve always known you were destined for it. I knew you’d be great. Why, even in those first days here, you promised it. You knew it, too. You had the look of a man who was dedicated to something beyond the immediate, the look of one who is going to travel far and high. I believe that was one of the reasons why I loved you. And you——” She leaned over the table, and spread out the brilliant feathers of her fan, gazing at their splendour and not at her husband as she went on: “Did you love me when you married me?”
“Why else do men marry women?” he countered, letting the smoke veil his eyes.
“To put other women out of their lives, sometimes,” she said.
“Well?” He drew hard on the cigar.
“I never knew until to-day who she was,” she said. “I opened a letter by mistake. You may see from the envelope how easy it was for me to think it was addressed to me when I found it in my mail. It was directed merely to Washington, and the post office sent it to the house here.”
“I quite understand,” he said, and held out his hand for Dell Martin’s letter.
His wife drew it from the gay bag she had borne, and gave it to him. For a moment he looked at the pitiful missive, contrasting it with the appointments of the table before him.
“She’s dying,” Rhoda said, “and she asks you to go to her.”