For a few moments she did not move. The buoyancy of her nature was still considerable, and his last words had thrilled her and made her almost as happy as if he would return in an hour. She rose finally and walked across the hall, her inclination divided between the Senate Gallery where she might look at him, and her boudoir where she might fling herself on her divan and think of him. As she was moving along slowly, seeing no one, her arm was caught by a bony hand, and a familiar drawl smote her ear. "Laws, Miss Madison, have you gone blind all of a sudden? But you look as if you had two stars in your eyes." "How do you do, Mrs. Mudd? These are times to make anybody absent-minded." "Well, I guess! We're gettin' there and no mistake. Now look quick, Miss Madison--there's my husband, the one that's just got up off that bench. He's been talkin' to a constituent." Betty glanced across the Hall with some interest: she occasionally had doubted the reality of George Washington Mudd. A tall stout man in a loose black overcoat, a black slouch hat, and a big cotton umbrella under his arm, was stalking across the Hall with his head in the air, as if to sniff at the marble effigies of the great. Betty felt young again and gave a delighted laugh. "Why, I didn't know there really was anything like that!" she cried. "I thought--" "Well, I guess I'd like to know what you mean," exclaimed an infuriate voice; and Betty, turning to Mrs. Mudd's dark red face, recovered herself instantly. "I mean that your husband belongs to a type that our dramatists have thought worthy of preservation and of exercising their finest art upon. I often give writers credit for more creative ability than they possess, for I always am seeing some one in real life whose entire type I had supposed had come straight out of their genius. Take yourself, for instance. If I had not met you outside of a book, I should have thought you a triumph of imagination." "Well--thanks," drawled Mrs. Mudd, mollified though doubtful. "I don't claim that George is handsome, but he's the smartest man in our district and he'll make the House sit up yet." She giggled and rolled her eyes. "He was downright jealous because I came home from the reception and raved over the President," she announced. "Oh, my!" "Perhaps he's a Populist," suggested Betty. "Not much he ain't. He's a good Democrat with Silver principles." "Well, I'm glad you're happy. Good-afternoon." "I love the greatest man in America and she loves George Washington Mudd," thought Betty, as she walked down the corridor. "Mortals die, but love is imperishable. A half-century hence and where will the love that dwells in every fibre of me now, have gone? Will it be dust with my dust, or vigorous with eternal youth in some poor girl who never heard my name?" And then she went home to her boudoir. XIII