The old Capitol had always been for Derry a place of dreams.  He loved every inch of it.  The sunset view of the city from the west front; the bronze doors on the east, the labyrinthine maze of the corridors; the tesselated floors, the mottled marble of the balustrades; the hushed approach to the Supreme Court; the precipitous descent into the galleries of House and Senate, the rap of the Speaker’s gavel—­the rattle of argument as political foes contended in the legislative arena; the more subdued squabbles on the Senate floor; the savory smell of food rising from the restaurants in the lower regions; the climb to the dome, the look of the sky when one came out at the top; Statuary Hall and its awesome echoes; the Rotunda with its fringe of tired tourists, its frescoed frieze—­Columbus, Cortez, Penn, Pizarro—­; the mammoth paintings—­Pocahontas, and the Pilgrims, De Soto, and the Surrender of Cornwallis, the Signing of the Declaration, and Washington’s Resignation as Commander-in-Chief—­Indian and Quaker, Puritan and Cavalier—­these were some of the things which had ravished the eyes of the boy Derry in the days when his father had come to the Capitol to hobnob with old cronies, and his son had been allowed to roam at will.

But above and beyond everything else, there were the great mural paintings on the west wall of the House side, above the grand marble staircase.

“Westward the Course of Empire takes its way—!”

Oh, those pioneers with their faces turned towards the Golden West!  The tired women and the bronzed men!  Not one of them without that eager look of hope, of a dream realized as the land of Promise looms ahead!

Derry had often talked that picture over with his mother.  “It was such men, Derry, who made our country—­men unafraid—­North, South, East and West, it was these who helped to shape the Nation’s destiny, as we must help to shape it for those who come after us.”

It was in front of this picture that he was to meet Jean.  He had wanted to share with her the inspiration of it.

She was late, and he waited, leaning on the marble rail which overlooked the stairway.  People were going up and down passing the picture, but not seeing it, their pulses calm, their blood cold.  The doors of the elevators opened and shut, women came and went in velvet and fur, laughing.  Men followed them, laughing, and the picture was not for them.

Derry wondered if it were symbolic, this indifference of the crowd.  Was the world’s pageant of horrors and of heroism thus unseen by the eyes of the unthinking?

And now Jean ascended, the top of her hat first—­a blur of gray, then the red of the rose that he had sent her, a wave of her gray muff as she saw him.  He went down to meet her, and stood with her on the landing.  Beneath the painting, on one side, ran the inscription, “No pent up Utica confines our powers, but the boundless Continent is ours,” on the other side, “The Spirit moves in its allotted space; the mind is narrow in a narrow sphere.”