the tawny leopardess who keeps his house influences him in this cruel madness. I could wring her neck with exquisite pleasure. Why he allows her to stay and cloud his life with her she-devil temper and fog his name with vulgar gossip is beyond me."
Seated in the park on the Capitol hill the day after her father had introduced his Confiscation Bill in the House, pending the impeachment of the President, she again attempted to draw Ben out as to his feelings on politics.
She waited in sickening fear and bristling pride for the first burst of his anger which would mean their separation.
"How do I feel?" he asked. "Don't feel at all. The surrender of General Lee was an event so stunning, my mind has not yet staggered past it. Nothing much can happen after that, so it don't matter."
"Negro suffrage don't matter?"
"No. We can manage the Negro," he said, calmly.
"With thousands of your own people disfranchised?"
"The negroes will vote with us, as they worked for us during the war. If they give them the ballot, they'll wish they hadn't."
Ben looked at her tenderly, bent near, and whispered:
"Don't waste your sweet breath talking about such things. My politics is bounded on the North by a pair of amber eyes, on the South by a dimpled little chin, on the East and West by a rosy cheek. Words do not frame its speech. Its language is a mere sign, a pressure of the lips—yet it thrills body and soul beyond all words."
Elsie leaned closer, and looking at the Capitol, said wistfully:
