She opened her door, ran down the hall and into the parlor. Without an instant's hesitation she flung open a window and leaned out. The light from the street lamp fell full upon her. He could not fail to see her were he there. But he was not. The man pacing up and down before the house was the night watchman. Betty closed the window hurriedly and stumbled back into the dark room. The disappointment and reaction were intolerable. She felt the same blind rage with Circumstance which had attacked her the night he had kissed and left her. In such crises conventions are non-existent; she might have been primeval woman for all she recalled in that hour of the teachings of the centuries. Had he been there, she would have called him in. He was hers, whatever stood between them, and she alone had the right to console him. Her mind turned suddenly to his house. He was there, of course; it was absurd to imagine that his cool deliberation would ever forsake him. The moment the Senate adjourned he would have put on his hat, walked down to the East door, called a cab and gone home. And he was in his library. Why she felt so positive that he was there and not in bed she could not have told, but she saw the light in the long wing. She put her hands to her face suddenly, and moved to the door. She stumbled over a chair, and then noticed the intense darkness of the room. But beyond she saw distinctly the big red brick house of Senator North, with the light burning in the wing. Was she going to him? She wondered vaguely, for her will seemed to be at the bottom of a pile of struggling thoughts and to have nothing to say in the matter. Surely she must. He was a man who stood alone and scorned sympathy or help, but he would be glad of hers because it was hers; there was no possible doubt of that. And in spite of his record he must for the hour feel a bitter and absolute failure. A pebble would bring him to the window. He would come out, and come back here with her. She opened her arms suddenly. The room was so dark she almost could fancy him beside her. Would that he were! She had no adequate conception of a morrow. The future was drab and formless. His trouble drew her like a magnet. She trembled at the mere thought of being able to make him forget. And he? If he came out and saw her standing there, he would be more than a man if he resisted the impulse to return with her here and take her in his arms. And he too must be in a state of mind in which to-day dwarfed and blotted out to-morrow. For the moment she stood motionless, almost breathless, realizing so vividly the procession of bitter and apprehensive thoughts in the mind which for so long had possessed and controlled hers that she forgot her intention, even her desire to go to him. It was this moment of insight and abstraction from self that saved her. Her own mind seemed to awake suddenly.