“I mean stay.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“In Baranof they say you’re going to marry him.”

“Ross, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I feel so mixed up.”

“Fly back with me tomorrow. You don’t need a college degree.”

“You have one.”

“I wasn’t mixed up.”

“I’m going to Washington next week. Washington D.C., I mean.”

“Alone?”

“Oh, no! With Uncle Dave and Aunt Louise, and Bay, and Dina Drake’s going too—she’s his secretary—Uncle Dave’s, I mean—the Alaska bill is supposed to come up, it’s so exciting—a lot of Alaska people will be there. Maybe this time Alaska will make it. Oh, Ross, wouldn’t it be wonderful!”

They flew across a continent. Christine was accustomed to flying, certainly, yet now as she passed over a mighty land she was as elated as though she never had flown before. Mountains rivers plains prairies forests. It was a miraculously clear day, over the whole land there hung a dream-like opalescent light.

Their hotel was jammed, Dave Husack seemed to know everyone from the doorman to the hearty bellowing men who thronged the lobby. Christine was introduced to many men at the hotel, in the Senate lunchroom, in the halls of Congress. The men Dave knew seemed to be divided into three kinds only. There were the big bellowing kind like Dave Husack himself, usually they were middle-aged or older, they were jovial and they laughed a lot even when nothing very amusing was going on. They greeted one another with affectionate abuse and name-calling. Why, you old son of a gun! they said, fondly. You old hoss thief, you old crook! They flung an arm about the shoulder of the man they greeted, they were always touching anyone to whom they happened to be speaking—an arm, a hand, a shoulder as though, by actual physical contact, they could hold the attention of the other. If you were not wary, Chris found, they could back you into a corner and paw you like an Alaska brown bear.

Then there were the quiet crafty secret ones. Like Sid Kleet, she thought. He was there, too. These talked in a low voice, their eyes were turned to the corner with a listening look. Sometimes they talked behind their hands, their faces were like those Christine had seen in the portraits on the walls of Italian galleries, depicting thirteenth-century Florentine political plotters, the look, the gestures, the planes of the crafty faces were the same.

The third sort was made up of younger men, they looked a good deal like Bay Husack; disillusioned, Christine decided, and striking but not as handsome as Bay. They smiled down at you in an appreciative sort of way, they were a lot like the boys at the university, really. They were well dressed, not sloppy at all, but not sharp, either. Serious, pleasant, agreeable. They looked like young businessmen or lawyers or advertising writers, and sometimes she was rather startled when she heard their names or recognized them from newspaper photographs. They were so young to be so well known and nationally successful. Yet as they talked with her, if she happened to look up at them suddenly, instinctively sensing a loss of attention, she found that while their heads were still bent admiringly toward her, and they still were laughing easily and saying, “Yup. Yup. Oh, now you’re kidding me, Miss Storm,” their eyes had an anxious strained look and they were listening, not to her, but to two men who were conversing a few feet away.