Maxwell Sears had brought the three women home. He had a fashion of following up Anne's engagements and putting his car at her disposal. When Amy had vetoed any more adventures at the Capitol he had conceded good-naturedly that she was right. After that he had always included Amy or Ethel in his invitations.
"They are very pretty dragons," he had written to Winifred, "and little Anne is like a princess shut in a tower."
Winifred, reading the letter, had brooded upon it. "He's falling in love. A child like that--she'll spoil his future."
Congress was having night sessions. "If I could only have you up there," Maxwell had said to Anne as he had driven her home from the matinée, with old Molly and Ethel on the back seat. "I should steal you if I dared."
"Yes. To-night. Ethel and Amy are going to a Colonial Dames meeting with Molly Winchell. I never go. I hate ancestors."
"I shouldn't let you do it," he hesitated, "but ghosts walk after dark in the Capitol corridors."
"I know," she nodded. "Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln."
It was the thought of her rendezvous with him that lighted her eyes when she talked to Murray. But Murray did not know. So he swayed up on his toes and glanced in the glass and was glad of his thinness and tallness.
Maxwell came for Anne promptly. "You must get me back by ten," she told him. "I have a key, and Charlotte's out."
It was a night of nights, never to be forgotten. Maxwell did not take Anne into the Gallery. He had not brought her there to hear speeches or to be conspicuous in the glare of lights. He led her through shadowy corridors--up wide dim stairways.
At one turn he touched her arm. "Look!" he whispered.
It was a great game! On the east front Columbus spoke to them of ships that sailed toward the sunset; in the Rotunda they kept a tryst with William Penn; from the west-front portico they saw a city beautiful--the streets under the moon were rivers of light--the great monument reached like the soul of Washington toward the stars!
Out there in the moonlight Maxwell spoke of another great soul, gone of late to join a glorious company.
"It was he who taught me that life is an adventure."
Anne caught her breath. "To think of him dead--to think of them all--dead."