"There were sixty girls last year--sixty-three," she went on. "Next year there will be more--about a hundred. It's like a garden, and I'm the gardener, busy from morning till night, with no time to think of anything but my plants and flowers." She had conjured a picture that made my heart ache. I suddenly felt old and sad and lonely--a forlorn failure. "I too am a gardener," said I. "But it's a sorry lot of weeds and thistles that keeps me occupied. And in the midst of the garden is a plum tree--that bears Dead Sea fruit." She was silent. "You don't care for politics?" said I. "No," she replied, and lifted and lowered her eyes in a slow glance that made me wish I had not asked. "It is, I think, gardening with weeds and thistles, as you say." Then, after a pause: "Do _you_ like it?" "Don't ask me," I said with a bitterness that made us both silent thereafter. That evening I got Fred to land me at the nearest town. The train she must have been on had just gone. In the morning I took the express for the East. Arrived at Washington, I drove straight to her school. A high iron fence, not obstructing the view from the country road; a long drive under arching maples and beeches; a rambling, fascinating old house upon the crest of a hill; many windows, a pillared porch, a low, very wide doorway. It seemed like her in its dark, cool, odorous beauty. She herself was in the front hall, directing some workmen. "Why, Senator Sayler, this _is_ a surprise," she said, advancing to greet me. But there was no suggestion of surprise in her tone or her look, only a friendly welcome to an acquaintance. She led the way into the drawing-room to the left. The furniture and pictures were in ghostly draperies; everything was in confusion. We went on to a side veranda, seated ourselves. She looked inquiringly at me. "I do not know why," was my answer. "I only know--I had to come." She studied me calmly. I remember her look, everything about her--the embroidery on the sleeves and bosom of her blouse, the buckles on her white shoes. I remember also that there was a breeze, and how good it felt to my hot face, to my eyes burning from lack of sleep. At last she said: "Well--what do you think of my little kingdom?" "It is yours--entirely?" "House, gardens--everything. I paid the last of my debts in June." "I'm contrasting it with my own," I said. "But that isn't fair," she protested with a smile. "You must remember, I'm only a woman." "With my own," I went on, as if she had not interrupted. "Yours is--yours, honestly got. It makes you proud, happy. Mine--" I did not finish. She must have seen or felt how profoundly I was moved, for I presently saw her looking at me with an expression I might have resented for its pity from any other than her. "Why do you tell _me_ this?" she asked.