By that time they had reached the beautiful wooded park, where, fifteen minutes from the fashionable quarter of Washington, one can be in the heart of the woods. The afternoon was balmy and the scent of the spring was in the air; all the earth was brown and green, and on the southern slopes of the hillsides little leaves were coming out shyly; already the blue birds and robins were riotous with song, and between the interlacing tree-tops, full of brown buds, the sky shone blue with the blueness of spring. The stream, swollen by the melting snows, rushed and swirled, and the little waterfalls laughed and danced madly in the golden sunlight. The park was full of smart carriages, automobiles and men and girls on horseback. Senator March, taking the newspaper out of his pocket, adjusted his glasses and began to read. Alicia March lay back in her corner of the carriage, seeing neither her husband nor the beauty and glory of earth and sky around her. It was the old story, she knew not where to turn for money, and the sum she had spent and what she had to show for it bewildered her. Colegrove, for the third or fourth time, had demanded copies of certain letters and documents, and Alicia knew that no money would be forthcoming until she had secured them. Colegrove had not become in the least insolent in his manner; on the contrary, Alicia saw, with the eye of experience, that he was becoming more ingratiating. She even suspected that Colegrove was after another kind of stake, and more delicate plunder than legislation favourable to railways. She felt a singular and growing dislike to deceiving her husband. It was new to her, and was a part of that strange dislocation and unreality of life that she should have scruples. Formerly she had not known what scruples meant and had no fears whatever, but now she was troubled with both scruples and fears, which bewildered and tormented her. If she ceased to hold any communication with Colegrove it meant a revelation of her debts, her duns, and complications to her husband, and if she continued upon the path in which she had entered a precipice lay before her. Alicia March and her husband sat silent for half-an-hour as the thoroughbred horses, champing their bits, trotted slowly along the wooded road. All at once Alicia glanced at her husband; his face had turned an ashen grey, and his eyes, with a strange expression in them, were fixed upon the newspaper before him and he was as motionless as a dead man. Then as Alicia watched him with amazed and terrified eyes, he glanced at her and silently laid the newspaper in her lap.