II
Washington gave her all the graciousness in which she had
had faith: white columns seen across leafy parks, spacious
avenues, twisty alleys. Daily she passed a dark square house
with a hint of magnolias and a courtyard behind it, and a tall
curtained second-story window through which a woman was
always peering. The woman was mystery, romance, a story
which told itself differently every day; now she was a
murderess, now the neglected wife of an ambassador. It was
mystery which Carol had most lacked in Gopher Prairie, where
every house was open to view, where every person was but
too easy to meet, where there were no secret gates opening
upon moors over which one might walk by moss-deadened
paths to strange high adventures in an ancient garden.
As she flitted up Sixteenth Street after a Kreisler recital,
given late in the afternoon for the government clerks, as the
lamps kindled in spheres of soft fire, as the breeze flowed into
the street, fresh as prairie winds and kindlier, as she glanced
up the elm alley of Massachusetts Avenue, as she was rested
by the integrity of the Scottish Rite Temple, she loved the
city as she loved no one save Hugh. She encountered negro
shanties turned into studios, with orange curtains and pots of
mignonette; marble houses on New Hampshire Avenue, with
butlers and limousines; and men who looked like fictional
explorers and aviators. Her days were swift, and she knew that
in her folly of running away she had found the courage to
be wise.
She had a dispiriting first month of hunting lodgings in the
crowded city. She had to roost in a hall-room in a moldy
mansion conducted by an indignant decayed gentlewoman,
and leave Hugh to the care of a doubtful nurse. But later
she made a home.
