Then Constance, turning to Annette, said she would be so glad if she and Mr. Crane would pay her a visit during the summer. Annette’s eyes sparkled; it was a distinct triumph for her, because she knew, and knew that Crane knew, that he never would have been asked but for her. She thanked Constance warmly, but said she was afraid it was impossible--she never went away from Circleville in summer; and Constance, seeing longing in Thorndyke’s eye, repeated her invitation to him, and made his middle-aged heart beat fast by doing it; and then it was time to go, and the train pulled out, and Constance was gone. Thorndyke put Annette on her suburban car, and walked back to his lodgings, through the hot, bright streets--hot and bright in spite of the lush greenness of the shade. But the day had turned lead coloured to him; and although there were still plenty of persons in town, and the capital was seething, for it was yet some days before adjournment, Thorndyke felt as if the whole town were silent and deserted. The presence of Constance Maitland made any place full for Geoffrey Thorndyke, and her absence made a desert to him. He contrasted in his own mind his feelings of to-day and of a year ago. Then, he had reached a kind of dull acquiescence in fate, or thought he had. Despairing of forgetting Constance, he had learned to endure quietly the poignant pain of remembering her, and in default of all else in life to interest him he had thrown his whole soul and being into politics. Now, the sound of Constance Maitland’s voice, the touch of her hand, was always with him, and had turned an otherwise dull and prosaic world into a region of splendid tumult and delicious agitations, for he would not have gone back to his past state for anything on earth. Constance had a deep regard for him--of that there could be no doubt. She commanded his society whenever she could; she exerted herself to please and flatter him; and he accepted it as a man drinks water in the desert, not analysing it, but exulting in it. Even those frequent seasons when he called himself a blankety-blank fool were not devoid of enjoyment--at least, it was not stagnation. He yearned after a million or so of money, that he might lay at Constance’s feet, and ask her to throw away the fortune that stood between them, but he was too sound and sane a man to imagine that he would ever be a rich man. Politics had by no means lost its interest for him, but rather had it gained--that at least was something to give him value in Constance’s eyes. As for that bare possibility of the senatorship two years hence, in the event that Senator Standiford should retire, Thorndyke regarded it as an iridescent dream. He did not believe that Senator Standiford would retire. He heard no more of Letty Standiford’s delicate health, or the Senator’s, either. Letty was rushing about Washington in an automobile, helloing at young gentlemen on the street, and doing many loud,