continuity of her
thought broke up in a tangle of emotion--even there in the white morning
light of that remote committee room.

The hearing was beginning; it was beginning with phrases like, "The
committee would be glad, governor, if you would tell us in your own
words----"

"If I might be permitted, Mister Senator, my understanding is----"

Again and again she saw the trap laid for him and thought with alarm
that there was no escape, and then saw that with no effort, with just a
turn of his easy wrist, he escaped, and what was more remarkable, had
told the truth--yes, as she thought it over, it was nearly the truth. He
was particularly successful with the fox-faced senator, whose only
interest seemed to be to get the governor to say something that would
look badly in newspaper headlines. She grasped Albee's method after a
few instances. It was to make the senator define and redefine his
question until whatever odium attached to the subject would fall on the
questioner, not the answerer.

After fifteen minutes she knew that he was a match for them--his mind
was quicker, subtler and more powerful. He made them all seem mentally
clumsy and evilly disposed. He could put their questions, even the
hostile ones, so much better than they could. Again and again, with a
gentle, an almost loving smile, he would say, "I think, Mister Senator,
if you will allow me, that what you really mean to ask in that last
question is whether----" And a clear exact statement of the confused
ideas of the senator would follow, as the senator, with an abashed nod,
would be forced to admit.

Lydia, unused to this sort of thing, thought it little short of a
miracle that anyone's mind could work as well as that under such
pressure. He seemed to her a superman.

After the hearing they lunched downstairs in the airless basement in
which the Fathers of the Senate are provided with excellent Southern
dishes, served by white-jacketed negroes. Lydia met most of the
notables, even the fox-faced senator, who, she was told was very much of
a ladies' man. She was for the first time a satellite, a part of the
suite of a great man, and glad to be.

Then, after luncheon, Benny having tactfully expressed a wish to go back
to the hotel and rest, as they were going out to dinner, Lydia and the
governor took a walk along the banks of the Potomac. March is very
springlike in Washington. The fruit trees were beginning to bud and the
air was mild and still, s