Hamilton set his mobile lips in a hard line. His eyes looked like steel. "Yes," he said harshly, "let them take the consequences. They had their day, they have gone mad with democracy, let them now die of their own poison. The greatest Republic the world ever will have known is only in the ante-room of its real history." He stood up suddenly and held out his hand. "Good-bye, sir," he said. "We may or may not meet again before you too are forced to abandon your work. But I often shall be close to you, and I believe, I firmly believe, that you will do exactly as I should do if I stood on solid ground to-day." North took the exquisite hand that had written the greatest state papers of the century, and looked wonderingly at its white beauty. It suddenly gave him the grip of an iron vise. North returned the pressure. Then the strong hand melted from his, and he stood alone. Exactly in what the transition from sleep to waking consisted, North was not able to define. There was a brief sense of change, including a lifting of heavy eyelids. Technically he awoke. But he was standing on the hearthrug. And his right hand ached. He shrugged his shoulders. "What difference does it make whether he appeared to my waking eyes or passed through my sleeping brain and sat down with my soul?" He plunged his hands into his pockets and stood thinking for many minutes. He said, half aloud, finally,-- "Not in my time, perhaps. But it will come, it will come." XVI When Betty awoke at four o'clock in the afternoon, she discovered with some surprise that she had slept soundly for eleven hours. Her head was a trifle heavy, but after her bath she felt so fresh again that the previous day and night seemed like a very long and very ugly dream. She reflected that if she had not written to Burleigh before she went to bed she certainly should do so now. He still seemed the one safeguard for the future; she had convinced herself that with her capacity for violent emotion and nervous exaltation, her head was not to be trusted. She felt calm enough this afternoon, and she opened with no enthusiasm the note which had arrived from Burleigh. She might have drawn some from its superabundant amount, but she frowned and threw it in the fire. Then she went to her mother's room and announced her engagement. "My dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Madison. "Well!--I am delighted." Then she looked keenly at Betty and withheld her congratulations. But she asked no questions, although the edge suddenly left her pleasure and she began to wonder if Burleigh were to be congratulated. "He is coming to dinner," Betty continued, "and I want you to promise me that you will not leave us alone for a moment, and that you will go with me to New York to-morrow." "I will do anything you like, of course, and I always enjoy New York."