In that time no human being, not even Roger March, suspected that Alicia March and Colegrove ever met except in the presence of others, and generally at dinners. Nevertheless, they had brief interviews, chiefly relating to bills and their payment, and papers were handed over to Colegrove, and crisp new bills for considerable amounts were received by Alicia. These meetings generally took place in unfrequented streets and parks at twilight, and might easily be explained as accidental. Those were not occasions of sentiment, but when Alicia and Colegrove met in drawing-rooms Colegrove then said things which conveyed to Alicia that her husband was puritanical in his ideas, which Colegrove was not, and when she should find Roger March intolerable there was a refuge waiting her. It seemed quite natural to Alicia March to hear these veiled declarations from Colegrove. She admired the ingenuity with which he made them and listened to them with a smiling composure, the meaning of which not all Colegrove’s acuteness could discover. Alicia herself did not know her own feeling towards her husband, nor had the brilliant life upon which she had entered acquired any true sense of reality and proportion. She felt as if she were living in a dream, silent, changeful, exciting, but still a dream. As the cab jogged along over the streets Alicia turned all these things over in her mind. It was the first time she had ever had a meeting with Colegrove which was open to the slightest suspicion, but Colegrove had written to her that he did not desire it to be known that he was in Washington while the great railroad legislation was pending until he should be called as a witness, and for that reason he would come to Washington for a few hours, stopping at a plain hotel where he was not known, when he was supposed to be on a hunting trip in Pennsylvania. It was almost dark when she stepped out of the cab in front of the hotel where Colegrove was staying. He was watching for her and came down the steps to meet her. Time had dealt lightly with him, and he was the same strong, supple, keen-eyed man of four years before, with the same captivating frankness of manner, which did not reveal himself, but revealed others to him. "Now," he said, when Alicia and he were in the lobby of the little hotel, "you won’t mind coming to my sitting-room, where we can talk privately?" "I mind very much," replied Alicia coolly. "There must be a public drawing-room somewhere about, and we can talk there." "Here it is," replied Colegrove, opening a door near by and entering a large, showily furnished room glaring with gas. "But this is a very public drawing-room," said Colegrove, smiling, "and it is not to be supposed that Mrs. March is not known by sight to a great many people who are not on her visiting list. You had better come to my sitting-room."