I borrowed them and saw that his gaze was fixed on a box on the other side of the huge auditorium, on a woman in that box--I had only to look at her to see which woman. She was beautiful, of that type of charm which the French sum up in the phrase "the woman of thirty." I have heard crowds bellow too often to be moved by it--though the twenty or thirty thousand gathered under that roof were outdoing the cannonade of any thunderstorm. But that woman's look in response to Scarborough's--there was sympathy and understanding in it, and more, infinitely more. He had been crushed for the moment--and I understood enough of his situation to understand what a blow to all his plans this untimely apparent triumph was. She was showing that she too felt the blow, but she was also sending a message of courage to him--one of those messages that transcend words, like music, like the perfumes of flowers and fields, like that which fills us as we look straight up into a clear night sky. I lowered the glasses and looked away--I could not bear it. For the moment I hated him--hating myself for it. I heard Carlotta asking a woman in the box next ours the name of "the woman with the white plume in the big black hat in the seventh box on the other side." "Mrs. Scarborough," was the answer. "Oh, is that _she_?" exclaimed Mrs. Sandys, almost snatching her glasses from me in her eagerness. "You know who she was--John Dumont's widow--you remember him? She must be an unusual person to have attracted two such men." But Scarborough was nominated now. He waved aside those who tried to take him up and bear him to the platform. He walked down the aisle alone and ascended amid a tense silence; he stood looking calmly out. His face had lost its whiteness of a few minutes before. As he stood there, big and still, a sort of embodiment of fearlessness, I wondered--and I fancy many others were wondering--whether he was about to refuse the nomination. But an instant's thought drove the wild notion from my mind. He could not strike that deadly blow at his party. "Fellow delegates," said he--a clearer, more musical voice than his I have never heard--"I thank you for this honor. As you know, I opposed the platform you saw fit to adopt. I have nothing to retract. I do not like it. But, after all, a candidate must be his own platform. And I bring my public record as proof of my pledge--that--" he paused and the silence was tremendous. He went on, each word distinct and by itself--"if I am elected"--a long pause--"I shall obey the Constitution"--another long pause--"I shall enforce the laws!"