Albert Cross didn’t answer that at all.

Iron wheels screaming against steel rails, the train slowed to a halt. The conductor worked his way through the cars, calling out the destination: “Philadelphia! All out for Philadelphia!”

Flora Hamburger’s heart thudded in her chest. Until this train ride, she had never been out of New York State-never, come to that, been out of New York City. But here she was, arriving in the de facto national capital as the newly elected Socialist member of the House of Representatives for her Lower East Side district.

She wished the train had not come into the Broad Street station at night. Blackout curtains on the windows kept light from leaking out of the cars-and kept her from seeing her new home. The Confederates’ night bombers were not hitting Philadelphia so hard as the aeroplanes of the United States were punishing Richmond-they had to fly a long way from Virginia-but no one wanted to give them any targets at which they might aim.

Her lip curled. She had opposed the war from the beginning, and wished her party had been more steadfast in opposing it. After once supporting war loans, the Socialists had been unable to avoid doing it again and again.

No one sharing the car with her knew who she was. Several young officers-and a couple of older men in business suits-had tried to strike up a conversation on the way down from New York City. As was her way in such situations, she’d been polite but resolutely distant. Most of them were likely to be Democrats, and few if any were likely to be Jews. She wondered what living outside the crowded and solidly Jewish neighborhood in which she’d grown up would be like. So many changes…