He hurried down the stairs into the State House rotunda where the throngs were.  The hearing before the committee was adjourned.  The band was playing.  He thrust himself through the press of the women.  Maids and matrons stared after him.  His face was pale, his lips made a straight-edge and his eyes swept every group with eagerness that was almost wild.  It was search that was distracting.  There were women, women.  There were so many faces to scan!  Chance led him to her—­good fortune and the sudden thought that she would probably be found near some object of interest, were she escorted by a teacher.  He saw the group near the great case that held the State’s battle-flags.  He caught her arm and her startled face was turned up to his.

“Come,” he whispered, hoarsely.  “Come!  Do not ask me why.  Only come.  Hurry!”

With the trustfulness she had always shown in him she did not hesitate.  She did not even offer excuses to the tall woman who stepped forward to inquire the intentions of this abrupt young man.  She went, as she went in the north country when he called to her.  Clinging to his arm she hurried up the broad marble stairway.

She did not ask why.  Her faith was complete.  But his demeanor frightened her.

“I was sorry after I got here,” she gasped, as they hurried on.  “But the others came from the school, and I thought it would be such a great place here that no one would notice me.  I thought you would not see me, Harlan.  But I wanted to learn about—­about what you did—­what the lawmakers did, so that—­so that—­”

“Hurry,” he urged her.  He feared that they would be gone.

This brusqueness, his haste, his sternness troubled her more and more.  They were alone in the corridor that led to the committee-room.  She stopped, holding him back with her strong young arms.  He had hardly looked at her till then.  She had changed in the months since he had seen her.  Womanly dignity was mingled with the high spirit that had inspired the child.  Her garb, her new mien made her beauty brilliant.

“I never lied to you yet, Big Boy,” she cried.  “I came here because I was hungry for a sight of you.  Then I would go back to my work comforted.  Now my conscience is clear.  Take me where you will.”

In that moment his heart was revealed to him.  In the stress of new emotions he understood himself at last.  He understood that the love which mates, which sweeps away all calculation, which welds, trusts, and never pauses to analyze or compute, is love that disdains mere admiration of intellect or lure of beauty.

His quiet nature had depths.  They had never been stirred till then.  The child-love had been budding there ready for blossom.  It had been fed by faith and ripened by association.  Passion now brought it to fruition.  Madeleine Presson had appealed only to one side of him.  This girl rounded out the whole philosophy of love.  She was not a divinity.  His nature did not crave divinity.  In his strength, sincerity, ingenuousness, his man’s soul, primitive as the free woods, required the mate—­one to be cherished and protected.  And so, now, when all his soul was stirred, this girl, so bitterly in need of protection—­the girl whom the years had endeared to him—­came into his heart to reign there.