s men are finding out the vanity of the old dreams, the women seem to
be seizing on them. The mass of intelligent men have no longing for
political power. If a sort of public prominence is thrust on men'--he
shrugged as if his shoulders chafed under some burden--'_in their
hearts_ they curse their lot. I suppose it's all so new to the woman she
is amused. She even--I'm _told_'--his lifted hand, with the closed
fingers suddenly flung open, advertised the difficulty a sane person
found in crediting the uncanny rumour--'I'm _told_ that women even like
public dinners.'

'Well, you do.'

'I?'

'You go--to all the most interesting ones.'

'Part of my burden! Unlike your new friends, there's nothing I hate so
much, unless it is having to make a speech.'

'Well, now, shall I stop "playing at ma'ams" and just say that when I
hear a man like you explaining in that superior way how immensely he
_doesn't care_, I seem to see that that is precisely the worst
indictment against your class. If special privilege breeds that----'

It merely amused him to see that she was forgetting herself. He sat down
again. He stretched out his long legs and interlaced his fingers across
his bulging shirt front. His air of delicate mockery supplied the whip.

'If,' Vida went on with shining eyes, 'if to be able to care and to work
and to sacrifice, if to get those impulses out of life, you must carry
your share of the world's burden, then no intelligent creature can be
sorry the day is coming when all men will have to----' She took breath,
a little frightened to see where she was going.

'Have to----?' he encouraged her, lazily smiling.

'Have to work, or else not eat.'

'Even under your hard rule I wouldn't have to work much. My appetite is
mercifully small.'

'It would grow if you sweated for your bread.'

'Help! help!' he said, not above his usual tone, but slowly he turned
his fine head as the door opened. He fixed the amused grey-green eyes on
old Mr. Fox-Moore: 'A small and inoffensive pillar of the Upper House is
in the act of being abolished.'

'What, is she talking politics? She never favours me with her views,'
said Fox-Moore, with his chimpanzee smile.

When Borrodaile had said good-bye, Vida followed him to the top of the
stairs.

'It's rather on my mind that I--I've not been very nice to you.'

'"I would not hear thine enemy say so."'

'Yes, I've been rather horrid. I went and Trafalgar-Squared you, when I
ought to h