Before her was the Capitol, lighted from below, its dome floating cloudily above the white parapets as if mystically sustained. The superb beauty of it clutched her throat. She wanted to do something for it and all the holy ideals it symbolized. Evidently Polly was not coming. The telegram had probably never reached her. The porter asked her, "Was you thinkin' of a taxi?" and she said, "Yes," only to realize that she had no address to give the driver. BOOK III IN WASHINGTON [Illustration: "'It's beautiful overhead if you're going that way,'" Davidge quoted. He set out briskly, but Marie Louise hung back. "Aren't you afraid to push on when you can't see where you're going?" she demanded.] CHAPTER I She went through her hand-bag again, while the porter computed how many tips he was missing and the cab-starter looked insufferable things about womankind. She asked if any of them knew where Grinden Hall might be, but they shook their heads. She had a sudden happy idea. She would ask the telephone Information for the number. She hurried to a booth, followed by the despondent porter. She asked for Information and got her, but that was all. "Please give me the numba of Mrs. Widdicombe's, in Rosslyn." A Washington dialect eventually told her that the number was a private wire and could not be given. Marie Louise implored a special dispensation, but it was against the rules. She asked for the supervisor--who was equally sorry and adamant. Marie Louise left the booth in utter defeat. There was nothing to do but go to a hotel till the morrow. She recalled the stories of the hopelessness of getting a room. Yet she had no choice but to make the try. She had got a seat on the train where there were none. Perhaps she could trust her luck to provide her with a lodging, too. "We'll go back to the taxi-stand," she told the porter. He did not conceal his joy at being rid of her. She tried the Shoreham first, and when the taxicab deposited her under the umbrellas of the big trees and she climbed the homelike steps to a lobby with the air of a living-room she felt welcome and secure. Brilliant clusters were drifting to dinner, and the men were more picturesque than the women, for many of them were in uniform. Officers of the army and navy of the United States and of Great Britain and of France gave the throng the look of a costume-party. There was a less interesting crowd at the desk, and now nobody offered her his place at the head of the line. It would have done no good, for the room-clerk was shaking his head to all the suppliants. Marie Louise saw women turned away, married couples, men alone. But new-comers pressed forward and kept trying to convince the deskman that he had rooms somewhere, rooms that he had forgotten, or was saving for people who would never arrive.