“But to-morrow——”
“It’s the long years afterward I’m thinking of,” he told her.
“And the nomination——”
“Sometimes the things we put out of our lives,” he said, “are the only things we really keep.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “I can’t understand you at all to-night, Burton. Why should a man give up the highest honour a nation can give him——”
“There are other kinds of honour, Rhoda.”
“To go to a woman he hasn’t seen for twenty-five years?”
“She is the——” he began, then halted quickly in the fear of the hurt his word might give her.
“I understand,” she said.
She picked up her broken fan, and moved toward the door, but before she reached it, turned back. Her face was stonily calm. “Shall I telephone Senator Manning in the morning that you will not be there?” she asked him.