"How did your people feel about your taking up the law?"

Miss Greene said that she did not know how her people felt, and Vernon again had that baffled sense of her evading him.

"I've felt pretty much alone in my work," he said. "The women I know won't talk with me about it; they won't even read the newspapers. And I've tried so hard to interest them in it!"

Vernon sighed, and he waited for Miss Greene to sigh with him. He did not look at her, but he could feel her presence there close beside him.

Her gloved hands lay quietly in her lap; she was gazing out over the prairies. The light winds were faintly stirring her hair, and the beauty of it, its warm red tones brought out by the burnishing sun, suddenly overwhelmed him. He stirred and his breath came hard.

"Do you know," he said, in a new confidence, "that this has been a great day for me? To meet you, and to know you as I think I do know you now!

This morning, when I was speaking, I felt that with you to help me, I could do great things."

Miss Greene drew in her lips, as if to compress their fullness; she moved away on the seat, and raised her hand uneasily and thrust it under her veil to put back a tress of hair that had strayed from its fastening. Vernon saw the flush of her white cheeks come and go. Her eyebrows were drawn together wistfully, and in her blue eyes, that looked far away through the meshes of her dotted veil, there was a little cloud of trouble. She caught her lip delicately between the edges of her teeth. Vernon leaned slightly forward as if he would peer into her face. For him the day had grown suddenly hot, the spring had developed on the instant the oppressive heat of summer. He felt its fire; he could see its intensity vibrating in the air all about him, and he had a sense as of all the summer's voices droning in unison. The reins drooped from his listless fingers; the horse moped along as it pleased.

"I have always felt it, vaguely," Vernon went on, his voice dropping to a low tone, "and this morning it was suddenly revealed to me-"

Miss Greene raised her hand as if to draw it across her brow; her veil stopped her.

"Let's not talk about that now," she pleaded. "Let's enjoy the air and the country. I don't have them often." Her hand fell to her lap. The color had gone out of her cheeks. And Vernon suddenly felt that the summer had gone out of the air; a cold wind was blowing as over soiled patches of snow left in shaded depressions of the fields; the earth was brown and bare; the birds were silent. He jerked the horse smartly, and it gave an angry toss of its head, as it broke into its tentative trot.

"I do wish you could know the women I know," said Vernon, obviously breaking a silence. He spoke in an entirely different voice. "I meant to put it the other way. I meant that I wish they could know you, and I mean that they shall. You would be a revelation to them."

Miss Greene smiled, though her face was now careworn, almost old.

"Right along the line of our const.i.tutional amendment, now," he said, with a briskness, "do you think the women will become interested?"

"The women of your acquaintance, or of mine?" asked Miss Greene.

"You're guying," said Vernon, and when Miss Greene seriously protested, Vernon said he meant all the women, as politicians pretend to mean all the people, when they mean only the party.

"I'm afraid not," she said. "They could have the ballot to-morrow if they'd only ask for it. The trouble is they don't want it."

"Well, we must educate them," said Vernon. "I have great hopes that the women whom I know will be aroused by what we are doing."

"I have no doubt they will," said Miss Greene. There was something enigmatical in her words, and Vernon glanced uneasily at her again.

"How do you mean?" he asked.

"You'll learn when you see the newspapers to-morrow," said Miss Greene.

"Do you think they'll have it in full?" asked Vernon. He was all alert, and his eyes sparkled in a new interest.

"On the first page," she replied, with conviction. "Have they your picture?"

"I don't know," Vernon replied. "They can get it, though," he added, thoughtfully.

"They keep the portraits of all distinguished public men on hand," Miss Greene said, with a certain rea.s.surance in her tone.

"Oh, well, I hope they'll not print it," said Vernon, as if just then recalling what was expected of a distinguished public man under such circ.u.mstances.

"That's one of the penalties of being in public life," she answered with a curious smile.

"A penalty the ladies will be glad to pay when our reform is accomplished; isn't that so?" said Vernon, seeking relief in a light bantering tone.

"I thought we were not going to talk politics," she said, turning and looking at him. She adjusted her hat and held herself resolutely erect.

The sun was going down behind the prairies, the afternoon was almost gone; as they watched the sunset, Miss Greene broke the silence.

"It's a familiar sight," she said, and Vernon thought that he had a clue at last. She must know the prairies.

"It is just like a sunset at sea," she added.

When they had driven back to the town and Vernon had left her at the hotel, he turned to drive to the livery stable.

"By George!" he said, suddenly, speaking to himself. "I haven't read Amelia's letter!"

He fumbled in his coat pocket.

VIII

MISS GREENE'S predictions were all realized in the sensation Vernon's speech created. The newspapers gave whole columns to it and ill.u.s.trated their accounts with portraits of Vernon and of Maria Greene. Vernon thought of the pleasure Amelia must find in his new fame, and when he wrote to her he referred briefly but with the proper modesty to his remarkable personal triumph, and then waited for her congratulations.

The legislative session was drawing to a close; the customary Friday adjournment was not taken, but sessions were held that day and on Sat.u.r.day, for the work was piling up, the procrastinating legislators having left it all for the last minute.

The week following would see House and Senate sweltering in shirt sleeves and night sessions, and now, if a bill were to become law it was necessary that its sponsor stay, as it were, close beside it, lest in the mighty rush of the last few days it be lost.

Vernon, by virtue of his speech, had a.s.sumed the championship of the woman-suffrage resolution, and he felt it necessary to forego his customary visit to Chicago that week and remain over Sunday in Springfield. He devoted the day to composing a long letter to Miss Greene, in which he described the situation in detail, and suggested that it would be well for her, if possible, to come down to Springfield on Monday and stay until the resolution had been adopted. He gave her, in closing, such pledges of his devotion to the cause of womankind that she could hardly resist any appeal he might make for her presence and a.s.sistance.

On Monday he wired, urging the necessity of her presence. Tuesday morning brought him a reply, thanking him, in behalf of women, for his disinterested devotion to their cause, a.s.suring him of her own appreciation of his services, and saying that she would reach Springfield-Wednesday morning.

Meanwhile he had had no letter from Amelia, and he began to wonder at her silence. He was not only disappointed, but piqued. He felt that his achievement deserved the promptest recognition from her, but he found a consolation, that grew in spite of him, in the thought that Maria Greene would soon be in Springfield, and to his heart he permitted Amelia's silence to justify him in a freer indulgence of attention to this fascinating woman lawyer.

Tuesday evening the crowd, that grows larger as the session nears its close, filled the lobby of the Leland. The night was warm, and to the heat of politics was suddenly added the heat of summer. Doors and windows were flung wide to the night, and the tall Egyptians, used as they were to the sultry atmospheres of southern Illinois, strode lazily about under their wide slouch hats with waistcoats open and cravats loosened, delighting in a new cause for chaffing the Chicago men, who had resumed their customary complaints of the Springfield weather.

The smoke of cigars hung in the air. The sound of many voices, the ring of heavy laughter, the shuffle of feet over the tiles, the clang of the clerk's gong, the incessant chitter of a telegraph instrument that sped news to Chicago over the _Courier's_ private wire, all these influences surcharged the heavy air with a nervous excitement that made men speak quickly and their eyes glitter under the brilliant lights of countless electric bulbs. There was in that atmosphere the play of myriad hopes and ambitions, political, social, financial. Special delegations of eminent lawyers, leading citizens and prominent capitalists were down from Chicago to look after certain measures of importance. Newspaper correspondents hurried from group to group, gathering bits of information to be woven into their night's despatches.

Late in the evening the governor came over from the mansion, and his coming stirred the throng with a new sensation. His secretary was by his side, and they mingled a while with the boys, as the governor called them, after the politician's manner. Half a dozen congressmen were there, thinking always of renomination. Over in one corner sat a United States senator, his high hat tilted back on his perspiring brow. A group of men had drawn their chairs about him; they laughed at his stories.

One was aware that the speaker's apartments upstairs were crowded. One could easily imagine it; the door of his inner room, as men came and went, opening now and then, and giving a glimpse of the speaker himself, tired and worn under the strain that would tell so sorely on him before another week could bring his labors and his powers and his glories to an end. Through all that hotel that night, in lobby and in bar-room, on the stairs, in the side halls and up and down in the elevators, throbbed the fascination of politics, which men play not so much for its ends as for its means.

Vernon was of this crowd, moving from one group to another, smoking, laughing, talking. His heart may have been a little sore at the thought of Amelia's strange neglect of him, but the soreness had subsided until now it was but a slight numbness which he could forget at times, and when he did think of it, it but gave him resolution to play the game more fiercely.

He knew that it was inc.u.mbent on him to make sure of the adoption of the resolution on the morrow. He had already spoken to the lieutenant-governor and had promise of recognition. But he realized that it would be wise to make a little canva.s.s, though he had no doubt that all was well, and that by the next night he could mingle with this crowd serene and happy in the thought that his work was done; perhaps he might even spend the evening in the company of Maria Greene. His heart gave a little leap at this new and happy thought, and if the remembrance of Amelia came back just at that instant, its obtrusion only made his eyes burn the brighter.

He found it pleasant as he threaded his way through the crowd to halt senators as he met them and say: