ward the middle of it. I was
speaking, one afternoon, in defense of a measure for the big
contributors, which the party was forcing through the Senate in face of
fire from the whole country. Personally, I did not approve the measure.
It was a frontal attack upon public opinion, and frontal attacks are as
unwise and as unnecessary in politics as in war. But the party leaders
in the nation insisted, and, as the move would weaken their hold upon
the party and so improve my own chances, I was not deeply aggrieved that
my advice had been rejected. Toward the end of my speech, aroused by
applause from the visitors' gallery, I forgot myself and began to look
up there as I talked, instead of addressing myself to my fellow
Senators. The eyes of a speaker always wander over his audience in
search of eyes that respond. My glance wandered, unconsciously, until it
found an answering glance that fixed it.

This answering glance was not responsive, nor even approving. It was the
reverse,--and, in spite of me, it held me. At first it was just a pair
of eyes, in the shadow of the brim of a woman's hat, the rest of the
face, the rest of the woman, hid by those in front and on either side.
There was a movement among them, and the whole face appeared,--and I
stopped short in my speech. I saw only the face, really only the mouth
and the eyes,--the lips and the eyes of Elizabeth Crosby,--an expression
of pain, and of pity.

[Illustration: I SAW ONLY THE LIPS AND EYES OF ELIZABETH CROSBY p. 141]

I drank from the glass of water on my desk, and went on. When I ventured
to look up there again, the face was gone. Had I seen or imagined? Was
it she or was it only memory suddenly awakening and silhouetting her
upon that background of massed humanity? I tried to convince myself that
I had only imagined, but I knew that I had seen.

Within me--and, I suppose, within every one else--there is a dual
personality: not a good and a bad, as is so often shallowly said; but
one that does, and another that watches. The doer seems to me to be
myself; the watcher, he who stands, like an idler at the rail of a
bridge, carelessly, even indifferently, observing the tide of my thought
and action that flows beneath,--who is he? I do not know. But I do know
that I have no control over him,--over his cynical smile, or his lip
curling in good-natured contempt of me, or his shrug at self-excuse, or
his moods when he stares down at the fretting stream with a look of