y breach clear. Then
either I must resign or--probably this new Budget will lead to a
General Election. It's evidently meant to strain the Lords and provoke a
quarrel."

"You might, I think, have stayed to fight for the Budget."

"I'm not," I said, "so keen against the Lords."

On that we halted.

"But what are you going to do?" she asked.

"I shall make my quarrel over some points in the Budget. I can't quite
tell you yet where my chance will come. Then I shall either resign my
seat--or if things drift to dissolution I shall stand again."

"It's political suicide."

"Not altogether."

"I can't imagine you out of Parliament again. It's just like--like
undoing all we have done. What will you do?"

"Write. Make a new, more definite place for myself. You know, of course,
there's already a sort of group about Crupp and Gane."

Margaret seemed lost for a time in painful thought.

"For me," she said at last, "our political work has been a religion--it
has been more than a religion."

I heard in silence. I had no form of protest available against the
implications of that.

"And then I find you turning against all we aimed to do--talking of
going over, almost lightly--to those others."...

She was white-lipped as she spoke. In the most curious way she had
captured the moral values of the situation. I found myself protesting
ineffectually against her fixed conviction. "It's because I think my
duty lies in this change that I make it," I said.

"I don't see how you can say that," she replied quietly.

There was another pause between us.

"Oh!" she said and clenched her hand upon the table. "That it should
have come to this!"

She was extraordinarily dignified and extraordinarily absurd. She was
hurt and thwarted beyond measure. She had no place in her ideas, I
thought, for me. I could see how it appeared to her, but I could not
make her see anything of the intricate process that had brought me to
this divergence. The opposition of our intellectual temperaments
was like a gag in my mouth. What was there for me to say? A flash
of intuition told me that behind her white dignity was a passionate
disappointment, a shattering of dreams that needed before everything
else the relief of weeping.

"I've told you," I said awkwardly, "as soon as I could."

There was another long silence. "So that is how we stand," I said with
an air of having things defined. I walked slowly to the door.

She had risen and stood now