"Sally says they have bought up the atmosphere." "They may be said to have bought up several climates. I have spent a great many hours puzzling over that question, for they have put an end to the old days when young men could go into business with the hope of a progressive future. Now they are swallowed up at once, depersonalized, and the whole matter is one of the great questions affecting the future development of the Republic." He was not looking at Betty; he was staring out on the lake. His eyes and mouth were hard again; he looked like a mere intellect, nothing more. As Betty watched him, she experienced a sudden desire to put him back on the pedestal he had occupied in the first days of their acquaintance, and to worship him as an ideal and forget him as a man. That had been a period of intellectual days and quiet nights. And as he looked now, he seemed to ask no more of any woman. But in a moment he had turned to her again with the smile and the peculiar concentration of gaze which made women forget he was a statesman. "Not another word of politics," he said. "I did not get up at four in the morning to meet the most charming woman in America and talk politics. Do you know that it is over three months since I saw you last?" "You left Washington, so, naturally, I left it too." "I wonder, how much you mean? If I were to judge you by myself--Your few notes were very interesting. Did you enjoy California?" "California was made to enjoy, but I felt very much alone in it." "Of course you did. Nature is a wicked old matchmaker. You have felt quite as lonely up here since your return." "Yes, I have! But I have had a good deal to occupy my mind. Sally terrified me by asserting that Harriet and my cousin Jack Emory were in love with each other." "Who is Harriet?" "Oh, you have forgotten! And you made me take her into the bosom of my family." "Oh--yes; I had forgotten her name. I hope she is not making trouble for you." "She admitted that she loves him, but insists that he does not love her, and I don't think he does." "Probably not. I should as soon think of falling in love with a weeping figure on a tombstone." "What kind of women do you fall in love with?" asked Betty, irresistibly. She was sure of herself now. The passions of women are often calmed by the presence of their lover. Passion is so largely mental in them that it reaches heights in the imagination that reality seldom justifies and mere propinquity quells. For this reason they often are recklessly unfair to men, who are made on simpler lines. They had floated under the spreading arms of a thicket on the water's edge, and she was a brilliant white figure in the gloom.