She raised her spotted veil and drew off her gloves.

“I mustn’t talk myself out,” she was saying lightly, “because Dudley means to make me bring him to call this evening.  I can’t induce him to come by himself—­he simply won’t.  He considers, my mission in life to be the combined duties of paying his calls and entertaining his legislators.  We had six senators to dinner last night, and we pay six visits this evening.  Come here, Tweedle-dee,” to the baby.  “Come to your own Aunt Eugie and give her a kiss.”

The child looked at her thoughtfully and shook her head.

“Kith man,” she responded shortly.

The swift red rose to Eugenia’s face.  Nicholas was looking at her, and her eyes flashed with the old anger at a senseless blush.

“That’s right, old lady,” said the governor to the child.  “Tell her you’d rather kiss a man every time.”

“Of course she had,” replied Eugenia half angrily.  “She’s going to be her mother all over again.”

Juliet laughed her full, soft laugh.  “Now, Eugie,” she protested gaily, “my sins are many, but spare me a public confession of them.”

“She takes after her aunt,” put in Sally frankly.  “I always liked men better, and I think it’s unwomanly not to—­don’t you, governor?”

Nicholas put the child down and rose.

“I’m afraid my womanliness is only skin deep,” he returned, “but I wouldn’t give one honest man for all the women since Eve.”

“Behold our far-famed gallantry!” exclaimed Sally.

Eugenia looked up, laughing.  She had seized upon the child, and he saw her dark eyes above the solemn blue ones.

“I’m afraid you aren’t much of a politician, Governor Burr, if you tell the truth so roundly,” she said.  “The first lesson in politics is to lie and love it; the second lesson is to lie and live it.  Oh, we’ve been in Congress, Dudley and I.”

She moved restlessly, and her colour came and went like a flame that flickers and revives.  He wondered vaguely at her nervous animation—­she had not possessed a nerve in her girlhood—­nor had he seen this shifting restlessness the other night.  It did not occur to him that the meeting with himself was the cause—­he knew her too well—­but had his presence, or some greater thing, aroused within, her painful memories of the past?

As he walked down Franklin Street a little later he contrasted boldly the two Eugenias he had known—­the Eugenia who was his and the Eugenia who was Dudley Webb’s.  After fifteen years the rapture and the agony of his youth showed grotesque to his later vision; men did not love like that at forty years.  He could see Eugenia now without the quiver of a pulse; he could sit across from her, knowing that she was the wife of another, and could eat his dinner.  His passion was dead, but where it had bloomed something else drew life and helped him to live.  He had loved one woman and he loved her still, though with a love which in his youth he would