There is a way of announcing a death which shows that the speaker is contemplating the dead man’s shoes with particular interest. Without fully taking in what it meant to Crane and what he wished to convey, Constance at once saw that in Senator Brand’s death lay some possible great good for Crane. She remained silent a minute or two, her mind involuntarily reconstructing the horror and pity of the dead man’s taking off. Crane rose and walked up and down the room, his face working. “I have committed a great, a stupendous folly,” he said. “At the very outset of my real career I may have ruined it. I couldn’t describe to you what I have suffered this day--yet no one has suspected it. I felt the necessity for sympathy, the necessity to tell my story to some one, and I came to you. I know I have no right to do it--but it seems to me, Constance, that ever since the day I first saw you, you have had some strange power of sustaining and comforting me.” As Crane spoke her name, Constance involuntarily rose and assumed an air of offended dignity. But Crane’s distress was so real, his offence so unconscious, that her indignation could not hold against him. Without noticing her offended silence he came and sat down heavily in the chair that Thorndyke had just vacated. “You know,” he said, “in cases like this of Senator Brand’s death, the Governor appoints a senator until the Legislature meets and can elect, which will not be until the first of next January. Just as I had heard the news about poor Brand at my hotel I ran into Sanders, our Governor. I didn’t know he was in Washington. Sanders is a brute--always thinking of himself first. He button-holed me, took me into his bedroom, locked the door, and closed the transom. There were three other men present--all of whom I would not wish to offend. One of them has indorsed two unpaid notes for me. Sanders told me he had been looking for me, and with these other fellows--practical politicians every one of them--had already formulated a plan of campaign. The Governor would appoint me to fill the vacancy until the Legislature met in January and elected a senator for the short term, provided I would give him a clear track then. In further recompense, he agreed to support me for the long term--the election is only two years off. Sanders has had the senatorial bee in his bonnet for a long time, but the State organisation is not over-kindly to him, and Senator Bicknell is a little bit afraid of him, and naturally wouldn’t encourage his aspirations. And do you know, after an hour’s talk I allowed Sanders and those three fellows to wheedle me into that arrangement--and, of course, I can’t, in two years, supplant Senator Bicknell. Sanders is a long-headed rascal, and he knew very well that I was under money obligations to those men, and among them, aided and abetted by my own folly, I was buncoed--yes, regularly buncoed.”