Page:Despotism and democracy; a study in Washington society and politics (IA despotismdemocra00seawiala).pdf/118

 *buke in it, but without contempt, "that you are forgetting yourself strangely. I have often noticed in you a want of reticence. You should begin now to cultivate reticence. What you have just said has in it something insulting to me as well as to your wife—a person you seem to have forgotten. As for the political arrangement which you regret so much, I can only say that it seems to me to have been cold-blooded and unfeeling on both sides to a remarkable degree. You have spoken plainly; I speak plainly."

Constance leaned back quietly in her chair to watch the effect of what she had said. She felt then a hundred years older than Crane, who was older than she, and who knew both law and politics well, but was a child in the science of knowing the world and the people in it—a science in which Constance Maitland excelled. But even her rebuke had a fascination for him. No other woman had ever rebuked him—his wife least of all.

"Do you complain of me," he said, "for telling you my weaknesses, my misfortunes? Don't you see that what you have just told me is proof of all I have said? You see my faults, you tell me of them,