Before the cab rolled across the Rush Street Bridge on its long journey to the northward he was asleep.
It was half-past two in the morning when a hack drawn by weary horses on whose flanks the later glistened, drew up at the porte cochère of the old Dexter Smith place in Sunbury.
The cabman lumbered down and opened the door. A youth, nervously wide awake, leaped out. Then followed this brief conversation.
'You'd better pay me first. Fifteen dollars!
'Ssh! You'll wake the whole house up! You've simply got to wait until I get home. You needn't worry. I'm going to pay you.'
'You'd better. Say, he'd ought to have it on him.'
'We're not going into his pockets. Now you do as I tell you.'
Henry looked up at the door. Madame Watt, somebody, had left this outside light burning. Doubtless the thing to do was just to ring the bell.
He brushed the cabman aside. The Senator was such a little man, so pitifully slender and light! And Henry himself was supple and strong. He took the little old gentleman up in his arms and carried him up the steps. And once again in the course of this strange night his eyes filled.
But not for himself this time. Henry's gift of insight, while it was now and for many years to come would be fitful, erratic, coming and going with his intensely varied moods, was none the less a real, at times a great, gift. And I think he glimpsed now, through the queer confusing mists of thought, something of the grotesque tragedy that runs, like a red and black thread, through the fabric of many human lives.
The Senator had been a famous man. Through nearly two decades, as even Henry dimly knew, he had stood out, a figure of continuous national importance. And now he was just--this. Here in Henry's arms; inert.
'Ring the bell, will you!' said Henry shortly.
There was a light step within. The lock turned. The door swung open, and Cicely stood there.
She was wrapped about in a wonderful soft garment of blue. She was pale. And her hair was all down, rippling about her shoulders and (when she stepped quickly back out of the cabman's vision) down her back below the waist.
Henry carried his burden in, and she quickly closed the door.
'Has anybody seen? Does anybody know?' she asked, in a whisper.