It was late in the afternoon of one of those perfect spring days when the cherry trees are white with bloom behind the garden walls and all the parks are full of robins. Fox had left his work in his vacant committee-room at the Capitol, and crossing the city was walking westward with no companion but Sandy. The desire to see Rose had crystallized in his heart even while he struggled against it, and he turned almost unconsciously in the direction of her home. He had heard that very morning of the rumors, now numerous and substantial, of Judge Temple’s financial losses; one man had told him that the judge was on the brink of ruin, and the thought of distress and sorrow coming to her stung Fox with renewed misery. As he came in sight of the modest old house with its ivy mantled wall and its white door, with the half moon of triangular panes above it, and its fluted white pilasters on either side, he looked up over it with the feeling of a man who had shut the gate of Paradise in his own face. He had intended to pass it, crossing on the street below, but at the corner Sandy stopped and pricked his ears and then dashed forward with a joyous bark of greeting, and his master knew that he was betrayed. Rose had just mounted her horse at her own door and was dismissing the negro who had held the reins. The sun shone full in her face and made a nimbus of her soft bright hair, while her slim figure in the saddle looked more youthful than ever. She had recognized Sandy and greeted him with a kindly word as he leaped at her stirrup, and seeing his master behind him, she held in her restless horse and waited quietly, only a slight deepening of the color in her cheeks indicating the tumult in her heart. She had schooled herself for the moment and even in the shock of unexpected meeting her training held good; she was more composed than he was, as she answered his greeting. But, at a glance, he saw the change in her, the reserve in her eyes, the slightness of her smile, and taking offense at what seemed to him an injustice, he overlooked the fact that it was the baldest, the most pitiful acting of one who had never dissembled before in her life. “It’s too perfect a day to be indoors,” she said, with a lightness of tone which shocked her own ears; “I am going down by the speedway to see the river and that soft haze which I know is lying over on the Virginia shore; in the afternoon sun it looks like a mirage.” “I don’t think I should enjoy the sight,” Fox said dryly; “life has been too much of a mirage to me lately.” She looked down at him, the sun illuminating her beautiful eyes. “Life?” she repeated, with sudden girlish enthusiasm; “isn’t it what we make it? We owe it to ourselves--that moral responsibility.”