Another six months passed, and at its close Lyons received the expected nomination for Congress.  The election promised to be close and exciting.  Both parties were confident of victory, and were preparing vigorously to keep their adherents at fever pitch by rallies and torch-light processions.  Although the result of the caucus was not doubtful, it was understood between Lyons and Selma that he would call at the house that evening to let her know that he had been successful.  She was waiting to receive him in the library.  Mr. Parsons had gone to bed.  His condition was not promising.  He had recently suffered another slight attack of paralysis, which seemed to indicate that he was liable at any time to a fatal seizure.

Lyons entered smilingly.  “So far so good,” he exclaimed.

“Then you have won?”

“Oh, yes.  As I told you, it was a foregone conclusion.  Now the fight begins.”

Selma, who had provided a slight refection, handed him a cup of tea.  “I feel sure that you will be chosen,” she said.  “See if I am not right.  When is the election?”

“In six weeks.  Six weeks from to-morrow.”

“Then you will go to Washington to live?”

“Not until the fourth of March.”

“I envy you.  If I were a man I should prefer success in politics to anything else.”

He was silent for a moment.  Then he said, “Will you help me to achieve success?  Will you go with me to Washington as my wife?”

His courtship had been formal and elaborate, but his declaration was signally simple and to the point.  Selma noticed that the cup in his hand trembled.  While she kept her eyes lowered, as women are supposed to do at such moments, she was wondering whether she loved him as much as she had loved Wilbur?  Not so ardently, but more worthily, she concluded, for he seemed to her to fulfil her maturer ideal of strong and effective manhood, and to satisfy alike her self-respect and her physical fancy.  A man of his type would not split hairs, but proceed straight toward the goal of his ambition without fainting or wavering.  Why should she not satisfy her renewed craving to be yoked to a kindred spirit and companion who appreciated her true worth?

“I cannot believe,” he was saying, “that my words are a surprise to you.  You can scarcely have failed to understand that I admired you extremely.  I have delayed to utter my desire to make you my wife because I did not dare to cherish too fondly the hope that the love inspired in me could be reciprocated, and that you would consent to unite your life to mine and trust your happiness to my keeping.  If I may say so, we are no boy and girl.  We understand the solemn significance of marriage; what it imports and what it demands.  Of late I have ventured to dream that the sympathy in ideas and identity of purpose which exist between us might be the trustworthy sign of a spiritual bond which we could not afford to ignore.  I feel that without you the joy and power of my life will be incomplete.  With you at my side I shall aspire to great things.  You are to me the embodiment of what is charming and serviceable in woman.”