it myself to an unpleasant task for the
sake of you and your friends?"

"It is your party," he protested. "Your party as much as ours."

"Granted," she answered. "Yet who are the responsible members of it? You
know my opinion of Mannering as a politician. I would sooner follow him
blindfold than all the others with my eyes open. Whatever he may lack, he
is the most honest and right-seeing politician who ever entered the
House."

"He lacks but one thing," Borrowdean said, "the mechanical adjustment
of the born politician to party matters. There was never a time when
absolute unity and absolute force were so necessary. If he is going to
play the intelligent inquirer, if he falters for one moment in his
wholesale condemnation of this scheme, he loses the day for himself and
for us. The one thing which the political public never forgives is
the man who stops to think."

"What do you want me to do?" Berenice asked.

"To go to him and find out what he means, what influences have been at
work, what is underneath it all. Warn him of the danger of even appearing
doubtful, or for a moment lukewarm. The one person whom the public will
not have in politics is the trifler. Think how many there have been,
brilliant men, too, who have lost their places through a single false
step, a single year, a month of dilettantism. Remind him of them. The man
who moves in a great cause may move slowly, if you will, but he must move
all the time. Remind him, too, that he is risking the one great chance of
his life!"

"He is to be Premier, then?" she asked.

"Yes! There is no alternative!"

"Very well, then," she said, "I will go. I make no promises, mind. I will
listen to what he has to say. I will put our view of the situation before
him. But I make no promises. It is possible, even, that I shall come to
his point of view, whatever it may be."

Borrowdean smiled.

"I have no fear of that," he declared, "but at least it would be
something to know what this point of view is. You will find him in a
queer mood. That little fool of a niece of his has been getting in with
a fast set, and making the money fly. You have heard of her last escapade
at Bristow?"

Berenice nodded.

"Yes," she said. "I went there this morning directly I had your note.
I feel rather self-reproachful about Clara Mannering. I meant to have
looked after her more. She is rather an uninteresting young woman,
though, and I am afraid I have let her drift away."

"Sh