Lifted Masks | Page 8

the
others, enshrined Paris in feminine hearts. And never was lingerie
selected with more loving care than that which Virginia picked out that
afternoon. A tear fell on one particularly lovely _robe de nuit_--so
soothingly soft, so caressingly luxurious, it seemed that surely it might
help bring release from the bondage of those crushing years.
As they were leaving they were given two packages. "Just the kimona
thing you liked," he said, "and a trinket or two. Now that we're such
good friends, you won't feel like you did this morning."
"And if I don't want them myself, I might send them to my mother,"
Virginia replied, a quiver in her laugh at her own little joke.
He had put her in her cab; he had tried to tell her how much he thanked
her; they had said good-bye and the cocher had cracked his whip when
he came running after her. "Why, Young Lady," he called out, "we
don't know each other's names."
She laughed and gave hers. "Mine's William P. Johnson," he said. "Part
French and part Italian. But now look here, Young Lady--or I mean,
Miss Clayton. A fellow at the hotel was telling me something last night
that made me sick. He said American girls sometimes got awfully up
against it here. He said one actually starved last year. Now, I don't like
that kind of business. Look here, Young Lady, I want you to promise
that if you--you or any of your gang--get up against it you'll cable
William P. Johnson, of Cincinnati, Ohio."
The twilight grey had stolen upon Paris. And there was a mist which
the street lights only penetrated a little way--as sometimes one's
knowledge of life may only penetrate life a very little way. Her cab
stopped by a blockade, she watched the burly back of William P.

Johnson disappearing into the mist. The red box which held the yellow
opera cloak she could see longer than all else.
"You never can tell," murmured Virginia. "It just goes to show that you
never can tell."
And whatever it was you never could tell had brought to Virginia's
girlish face the tender knowingness of the face of a woman.

II
THE PLEA
Senator Harrison concluded his argument and sat down. There was no
applause, but he had expected none. Senator Dorman was already
saying "Mr. President?" and there was a stir in the crowded galleries,
and an anticipatory moving of chairs among the Senators. In the press
gallery the reporters bunched together their scattered papers and
inspected their pencil-points with earnestness. Dorman was the best
speaker of the Senate, and he was on the popular side of it. It would be
the great speech of the session, and the prospect was cheering after a
deluge of railroad and insurance bills.
"I want to tell you," he began, "why I have worked for this resolution
recommending the pardon of Alfred Williams. It is one of the great
laws of the universe that every living thing be given a chance. In the
case before us that law has been violated. This does not resolve itself
into a question of second chances. The boy of whom we are speaking
has never had his first."
Senator Harrison swung his chair half-way around and looked out at the
green things which were again coming into their own on the
State-house grounds. He knew--in substance--what Senator Dorman
would say without hearing it, and he was a little tired of the whole
affair. He hoped that one way or other they would finish it up that night,
and go ahead with something else. He had done what he could, and
now the responsibility was with the rest of them. He thought they were
shouldering a great deal to advocate the pardon in the face of the united
opposition of Johnson County, where the crime had been committed. It
seemed a community should be the best judge of its own crimes, and

that was what he, as the Senator from Johnson, had tried to impress
upon them.
He knew that his argument against the boy had been a strong one. He
rather liked the attitude in which he stood. It seemed as if he were the
incarnation of outraged justice attempting to hold its own at the
floodgates of emotion. He liked to think he was looking far beyond the
present and the specific and acting as guardian of the future--and the
whole. In summing it up that night the reporters would tell in highly
wrought fashion of the moving appeal made by Senator Dorman, and
then they would speak dispassionately of the logical argument of the
leader of the opposition. There was more satisfaction to self in logic
than in mere eloquence. He was even a little proud of his