The Speaker’s gavel descended presently, and quiet was partially restored. Crane was surrounded by members of both parties congratulating him, and he received their praise with a modesty more sincere than was generally believed. But to him had it been brought home that the crisis was bigger than the man, and the people were bigger than the crisis. Thorndyke, sitting near him, had shared in the tempest of feeling, but a sickening disappointment possessed him when he saw Crane’s personal triumph. In all of Thorndyke’s years of labour Fate had never given him any such a chance as this. But it was his years of labour which made Crane’s success possible. He could imagine the turgid, strained spread-eagleism, the powerful but ill-reasoned speech, which Crane, but for him, would have made. His eyes, in his cold fit of chagrin, wandered toward the place where Constance Maitland sat. A slender black figure, gracefully holding up the train of the black gown, was just disappearing through the door. Thorndyke’s impulse to follow Constance was accentuated by a strong desire, if there should be any debate, to leave Crane to his fate, but he soon found out that the whole matter would go over until the next day, and by that time his better self would assert itself, and he would do his part--not for Crane’s sake, but for the sake of that overmastering sense of public duty which he cherished religiously and never alluded to. So, finding himself free and superfluous, he left the chamber, partly to avoid the sight of Crane’s triumph and partly drawn by Constance Maitland. Before leaving, however, he went up like a gentleman and congratulated Crane, who, moved by an honest and generous impulse, expressed the utmost gratitude to him. Out in the spring sunshine that flooded the plaza and the parklike gardens and blazed upon the golden dome of the fair white National Library, visible beyond the fringe of great green trees, Thorndyke looked about him for Constance Maitland. She was just stepping into a smart little brougham with a good-looking pair of brown cobs, and drove away toward the quiet, shady, beautiful but unfashionable part of the town on the east. The carriage went slowly, and Thorndyke, pursuing it, saw it stop a few blocks from the Capitol, by one of those parks large enough for one to wander in and feel alone as if in the woods. Constance descended from the carriage holding her skirts daintily, and walked into the park. Thorndyke boldly followed her--she had said to-morrow--and this was to-morrow. He came upon her in a few minutes in a little open space, shut in, except for the pathway, by shrubbery on every side. The grass was full of daisies which had just put on their little white shirts and yellow caps, and a pair of robins hopped about with as much gayety and freedom as if they were country robins instead of town robins.