om the silver kettle into the teapot.
Then she sat still for some moments looking at the equipage with
expressionless eyes. I saw her hand upon the edge of the table tremble
slightly. I watched her closely. A vague uneasiness possessed me. What
might she not know or guess?

She spoke at last with an effort. "I wish you were in Parliament again,"
she said. "Life doesn't give you events enough."

"If I was in Parliament again, I should be on the Conservative side."

"I know," she said, and was still more thoughtful.

"Lately," she began, and paused. "Lately I've been reading--you."

I didn't help her out with what she had to say. I waited.

"I didn't understand what you were after. I had misjudged. I didn't
know. I think perhaps I was rather stupid." Her eyes were suddenly
shining with tears. "You didn't give me much chance to understand."

She turned upon me suddenly with a voice full of tears.

"Husband," she said abruptly, holding her two hands out to me, "I want
to begin over again!"

I took her hands, perplexed beyond measure. "My dear!" I said.

"I want to begin over again."

I bowed my head to hide my face, and found her hand in mine and kissed
it.

"Ah!" she said, and slowly withdrew her hand. She leant forward with her
arm on the sofa-back, and looked very intently into my face. I felt the
most damnable scoundrel in the world as I returned her gaze. The thought
of Isabel's darkly shining eyes seemed like a physical presence between
us....

"Tell me," I said presently, to break the intolerable tension, "tell me
plainly what you mean by this."

I sat a little away from her, and then took my teacup in hand, with an
odd effect of defending myself. "Have you been reading that old book of
mine?" I asked.

"That and the paper. I took a complete set from the beginning down
to Durham with me. I have read it over, thought it over. I didn't
understand--what you were teaching."

There was a little pause.

"It all seems so plain to me now," she said, "and so true."

I was profoundly disconcerted. I put down my teacup, stood up in the
middle of the hearthrug, and began talking. "I'm tremendously glad,
Margaret, that you've come to see I'm not altogether perverse," I began.
I launched out into a rather trite and windy exposition of my views, and
she sat close to me on the sofa, looking up into my face, hanging on my
words, a deliberate and invincible convert.

"Yes," she said, "yes."...

I had never do