CHAPTER XIV

Vassar looked at the scrawled note and saw that he must return to the city. The incident probably meant nothing and yet it brought to his mind a vague uneasiness.

He instinctively turned to Virginia who was looking at him with curious interest. She spoke with genuine admiration:

“I had no idea that any politician in America could win the hearts of his people in the way you hold yours--”

“It’s worth while, isn’t it?”

“Decidedly. It makes my regret all the more keen that you will not accompany me on my tour of the state--”

“You go soon?” he asked.

“I leave Monday morning for a month. It has been one of my dreams since we met that I’d win you--and we’d make a sort of triumphal tour together--”

“You’re joking,” he answered lightly.

“I know now that it is not to be, of course,” she said seriously.

He hadn’t thought of her being on such a fool trip. Waldron no doubt as her campaign financier would meet her at many points. The thought set the blood pounding from his heart.

“Shall we sit down a moment?” he suggested.

“By all means if I can persuade you,” she consented.

Behind a rich fir on the lawn stood a massive marble seat. They strolled to the spot and sat down. Hours of debate they had held here and neither had yielded an inch. A circular trellis of roses hid the house from view and sheltered the seat from the gaze of people who might be crossing the open space. The hedge along the turnpike completely hid them from the highway.

By a subtle instinct she felt the wave of emotion from his tense mind.

A long silence fell between them. Her last speech had given him the cue for his question. He had brooded over its possible meaning from the moment she had expressed the idea. He picked a pebble from the ground, shot it from his fingers as he had done with marbles when a boy.

Lifting his head with a serious look straight into her brown eyes he said:

“Did you believe for a moment that I could go with you on such a campaign tour?”

She met his gaze squarely.

“I thought it too good to be true, of course, and yet your unexpected sympathy and your--your--shall I say, frankly expressed admiration, led me into all sorts of silly hopes.”

“And yet you knew on a moment’s reflection that such a surrender of principle by a man of my character was out of the question.”

“It has turned out to be so,” she answered slowly.

“Could you have respected me had I cut a complete intellectual and moral somersault merely at the wave of your beautiful hand?”

“I could respect any man who yields to reason,” she fenced.

He smiled.

“I didn’t ask you that--”

“No?”

“You’re fencing. And I must come to the real issue between us. I do it with fear and trembling and with uncovered head. I had to be true to the best that’s in me with you for the biggest reason that can sway an honest man’s soul. I have loved you from the moment we met--”

He stopped short and breathed deeply, afraid to face her. His declaration had called for no answer. She remained silent. From the corner of his eye he noted the tightening of her firm lips.

“I’ve tried to tell you so a dozen times this week and failed. I was afraid, it meant so much to me. I had hoped to be with you another month at least in this beautiful world of sunlight and flowers, of moon and sea. I hoped to win you with a little more time and patience. But I couldn’t wait and see you go on this trip. I had to speak. I love you with the love a strong man can give but once in life. It’s strange that of all the women in the world I should have loved the one whose work I must oppose! You’ll believe me when I tell you that the fiercest battle I have ever fought was with the Devil when he whispered that I might win by hedging and trimming and lying diplomatically as men have done before and many men will do again. At least you respect me for the honesty with which I have met this issue?”

He had asked her a direct question at last. Her silence had become unendurable. Her answer was scarcely audible. She only breathed it.

“Yes, I understand and respect you for it--”

His heart gave a throb of hope.

“I don’t ask you if you love me now. I just want to know if I’ve a chance to win you?”

The impulse to seize her hand was resistless. She made no effort to withdraw it and he pressed it tenderly.

A wistful smile played about the sensitive mouth and she was slow to answer.

“Tell me--have I a chance?” he pleaded.

Her voice was far away but clear-toned music. He heard his doom in its perfect rhythm before the words were complete.

“I can’t see,” she began slowly, “how two people could enter the sweet intimacy of marriage with a vital difference of opinion dividing them. I couldn’t. Your honesty and intellectual strength I admire. This honesty and strength will keep us opponents. Such an union is unthinkable--”

“Not if we love one another,” he protested eagerly. “There is but one issue in human life between man and woman and that is love. If you love me, nothing else matters--”

She shook her head.

“It isn’t true. You love me--but other things matter. Otherwise you would give them up to win your love. I claim to be your equal in brain and heart if not in muscle. You say that if I love nothing else matters and yet you say in the same breath that you risk your love to save your principles. In your heart you know that other things do matter, and with me they matter deeply. I believe with every beat of my heart that the progress of the world waits on the advent of women in the organization of its industries, its politics and its thinking. This consciousness of her mission in the modern woman is the biggest fact of our century--”

She paused and faced him with a look of iron purpose.

“No matter if I did love you--I’d tear that love out of my heart if it held me back from the fulfilment of the highest ideal of duty to my sex--”

“What higher ideal can any woman hold than her home?”

“For the woman whose horizon is no larger there can be none. She can only see the world in which she moves. To some of us God has given the wider view. What is one life if it is sacrificed to this higher ideal? You are leading the renaissance of America. So am I. Our beautiful country with her teeming millions must rise in her glory and live forever when you and I have passed on. The soldier sees this vision when he dies in battle. So I see it today.”

He stooped again and gathered a handful of pebbles, rolling them thoughtfully in his hand. His eyes were on the ground.

“It isn’t Waldron?” he asked.

She smiled with a touch of mischief.

“No. But I confess such a man might tempt me--”

He threw the pebbles on the ground with a gesture of impatience.

“It’s not true!” he cried, facing her suddenly. With a fierce resolution he seized her hand.

“I won’t take any such answer,” he breathed desperately. “You’re not playing this game fairly with me. I’ve torn my heart open to you. You’re hedging and trimming. I won’t have it. You haven’t dared to deny your love. You can’t deny it. You love me and you know it and I know it--”

She lifted her free hand in a gesture of protest.

“You love me! I feel it! I know it!” he repeated fiercely.

With quick resolution he swept her into his arms and kissed her lips again and again. For just an instant he felt her body relax.

The next minute she had freed herself and faced him, her eyes blazing with anger. Her anger was not a pose. He saw to his horror that he had staked all on a mad chance and lost.

He stammered something incoherent and mopped his brow lamely.

“I suppose it’s useless for me to say I’m sorry--”

“Quite,” she said with cold emphasis.

“All right I won’t. Because I’m not sorry I did it. I’m only sorry you resent it. I love you. True love is half madness. I won’t apologize. If I must die for that one moment, it’s worth it.”

“There can be nothing more between us after this,” she said evenly.

He bowed in silence.

“Please play the little farce of polite society before my father and mother as you leave tonight. It’s the only favor I ask of you.”

“I understand,” he answered.