"Well, it came out just as he said. The next morning Piatt County threw her vote to me on the first ballot, and by the time it got down to Tazewell it was all over with Sprague; his man Simp Lewis--you've heard me speak of him--moved to make it unanimous, and the noise began."
He laughed again, this time in sheer joy as he lived those hours once more.
"It lasted all morning, when we weren't making speeches telling how we loved each other, and the party, and the dear old flag; it lasted all the way over here on the train, until I got home and saw everybody but the one woman I'd done it all for."
"But you saw me in the crowd while you were speaking from the hotel balcony, didn't you?"
The scene in the square flashed back to him. The sea of faces turned up to his, the halting vehicles, the heads at windows, the raveling edges of the common crowd--he saw it all.
"I had never heard you make a speech before, you know," she went on, "and I had always wished to--it was a splendid speech."
"Yes," he mused, and strangely for him, seemed not to have heard her praise, "yes, I saw you--I saw nothing but you. I thought of nothing but you!"
"Oh, Jerome," she said, "I was happy and proud that minute to think----"
Suddenly he seized her, crushing her to him as if in some sudden access of fear.
"Dearest!" he said, "all this is nothing to me beside you and your love. Do you really love me so very much?"
"No matter," she said; "you are--you. You are--mine."
"Are you sure," he persisted, somehow growing fierce, "sure--do you know what you are saying? No matter what I did, how unworthy I became, to what depths I sank"--even in that instant he was conscious of a dramatic quality in the situation, conscious of the eloquence, as it seemed to him, of his words--"to what depths of shame, of dishonor?"
"Why--Jerome!" the girl raised her face, half frightened, "what do you----"
"Tell me," he demanded, and he fairly shook her, "how do you know?"
She raised her face, and he saw that it was moistened with tears. She withdrew from his embrace, and sat erect. He let his arms fall to his side. Then she took his face in her two hands, she looked into his eyes, and she gave a scornful little laugh.
"How do I know?" she said. "Ah, Jerome, because I know you; because I know that you could do nothing dishonorable!"