to want it, and I cannot understand the apathy and conservatism which
prevents our being at war at the present moment. We have posed as the
champions of liberty long enough; it is time we did something."


"Ah, this is the youthful enthusiasm of the Senate," thought Betty.
"And I have been accustomed to think of forty-five as quite elderly. I
feel a mere infant and shall not call myself an old maid till I'm
fifty." She smiled approvingly into the Senator's illuminated face,
and he plunged at once into details, including the entire history of
Spanish colonial misrule. The history was told in head-lines, so to
speak, but it was graphic and convincing. Betty nodded encouragingly
and asked an occasional intelligent question. She knew the history
of Spain as thoroughly as he did, but she would not have told him so
for the world. It is only the woman with a certain masculine fibre in
her brain who ever really understands men, and when these women have
coquetry also, they convince the sex born to admire that they are even
more feminine than their weaker sisters. When Senator Burleigh
finished, Betty thanked him so graciously and earnestly, with such
lively pleasure in her limpid hazel eyes, that he raised his glass
impulsively and touched it to hers.

"You must have a _salon_" he exclaimed. "We need one in Washington,
and it would do us incalculable good. Only you could accomplish it:
you not only have beauty and brains--and tact?--but you are so apart
that you can pick and choose without fear of giving offence. And you
are not _blas?_ of the subject like Congressmen's wives, nor has the
wild rush and wear and tear of official society chopped up your
individuality into a hundred little bits. It would be brutal to
mention politics to a woman in political life, and consequently we