rson, with calmness, "is a word not yet of my using."

Rand leaned forward. "Yet?" he repeated, with emphasis.

There fell a silence in the room. After a moment of sitting quietly, his
hands held lightly on the arm of his chair, Mr. Jefferson rose and began
to pace the floor. The action was unusual; in all personal intercourse
his command of himself was remarkable. An inveterate cheerful composure,
a still sunniness, a readiness to settle all jars of the universe in an
extremely short time and without stirring from his chair, were
characteristics with which Rand was too familiar not to feel a frowning
wonder at the pacing figure and the troubled footfall. He was a man bold
to hardihood, and well assured of a covered trail, so assured that his
brain rejected with vehemence the thought that darted through it. To Mr.
Jefferson the word that he had audaciously used could have no
significance. Treason! Traitor! Aaron Burr and his Jack-o'-Lantern
ambitions, indeed, had long been looked upon with suspicion, vague and
ill-directed, now slumbering and now idly alert. In this very room--in
this very room the man had been talked of, discussed, analysed, and
puffed away by the two who now held it with their estranged and troubled
souls. Burr was gone; this August night he was floating down the Ohio
toward New Orleans and the promised blow. Had some fool or knave or
sickly conscience among the motley that was conspiring with him turned
coward or been bought? It was possible. Burr might be betrayed, but
hardly Lewis Rand. That was a guarded maze to which Mr. Jefferson could
have no clue.

Jefferson came back to the table and the great chair. "You were, of
course, as free as any man to travel to Philadelphia or where you would.
I heard that you were upon such a journey, and I felt a certitude that
you would also visit Washington. Had you done this, I should have
received you with the old confidence and affection. I should have
listened to the explanation I felt assured you would wish to make. At
that time it was my belief that there needed but one long conversation
between us to remove misapprehension, to convince you of your error, and
to recall you to your allegiance. Do not mistake me. I craved no more
than was human, no more than was justified by our relations in the
past--your allegiance to me. But I wished to see you devoutly true to
the principles you professed, to the Republican Idea, and to all that
you, no less than I, had