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, so that the river reflected the monument like a looking-glass.
"You seemed to me very wonderful this morning," she said.
"If I were thirty years younger you wouldn't say that to me with impunity."
"If you were thirty years younger you would seem like an inefficient boy compared to what you are now." Her face, her eyes, her whole body expressed the admiration she felt for his powers.
There was a little silence; then he said gravely, "If I could only persuade myself that it was possible that a girl of your age could love a man of mine----" Lydia caught her underlip in a white tooth--she had not meant love--she had not thought it a question of that. His sensitive egotism understood her thought without any spoken word, and he added, "And I should be content with nothing else--nothing else, Lydia."