"How stupid of me! To sit heah and talk of Ahthu' when Ah ought to have known that yo' all weh dying to heah abaout yoah husband. Oh, yes, Ah saw him at a distance a numbah of times, and one day Ah met him in the rotunda of the Capitol. We weh in the gallery, Ahthu' and Ah, and had heahd him make a speech." Emily had leaned forward a little; her lips were parted, and her teeth showed in the first smile of real interest she had displayed. She laid her hand lightly on Dade's arm, finding it a comfort to touch some one who had been there in Washington, some one who had seen him in his proper place, some one who had heard him speak, who had spoken to him and touched his hand. "What speech was it, Dade?" she asked, eagerly. "The one in the tariff debate, or----" "Oh, goodness me'cy me!" ejaculated Dade. "Ah don't know what it was on--yo' can't tell a wo'd they say, they all make so much noise. Ahthu' said it was lak a sun dance of the Ogallalla Sioux." "Tell me, how did he look?" Emily's eyes were glistening. "He looked splendid, Emily, splendid. He rose, yo' know, suddenly, and began to speak befo' Ah knew it was he at all. And he grew excited, and all the othahs crowded in to heah--it must have been a great speech." Emily made Dade tell her all she could recall out of her scattered memories of that scene, and the glow in her eyes mingled all the love she had borne him, all the hopes she had cherished, and all the high envy of Dade, to whom it had been given to be there and behold that scene. "And how is he looking, tell me that?" asked Emily when Dade had told her at last that she could think of no more to tell. Dade turned toward her as if she had an unpleasant revelation to make, and said, hesitatingly: "Well, Emily--he's grown fat!" She thought of the trim, narrow-waisted figure of her own brown soldier lover. But Emily only laughed. "Yes," she observed, "Mother Garwood says his father filled out at his age." Then Dade resumed her celebration of Beck once more, and described for Emily the glories of the Army and Navy ball. And when she had done, she sat, her chin on her little white fist, and looked dreamily out of the open window into the cool green foliage of the trees, where some robins were building a nest. Emily likewise fell into reverie, and they sat there a long time before the reverie was broken. It was Dade at last who said: "Emily, ah mah'ied people happieh than single people?" The childishness of the question was lost upon Emily, whose thoughts had been busy with the unpleasant task of contrasting her own girlhood's dreams and their fulfilment with the dreams of Dade and their promise. "No," she said in reply. Her voice was a mere hollow note. "Ah yo' all happy?" said Dade. "Y-yes," Emily answered. Her voice was still pitched on that hollow note.