e high meanings of justice--of love and
loyalty and liberty--"

Stirring words. The lovers had thrilled to them. Derry's hand had
gone out to Jean and her own hand clasped it. Together they saw the
vision of his going forth, a shining knight, girded for the battle by a
beloved woman--saw it through the glamour of high hopes and youthful
ardor!

A troop of cavalry on the Avenue! Jackies in saucer caps, infantry,
artillery, aviation! Blue and red and green cords about wide-brimmed
hats. Husky young Westerners, slim young Southerners, square-chinned
young Northerners--a great brotherhood, their faces set one way--and he
was to share their hardships, to be cold and hungry with the best of
them, wet and dirty with the worst. It would be a sort of glorified
penance for his delay in doing the thing which too long he had left
undone.

He was to have lunch with Jean in the House restaurant--he was a little
early, and as he loitered through the Capitol grounds, in his ears
there was the echo of fairy trumpets--"_trutter-a-trutt,
trutter-a-trutt--_"

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.