e of the door, 'if you take only the narrowest
personal view, a good deal depends on what you and I agree upon in the
next five minutes.'

'You recommend my realizing the larger issues. But in your ambition to
attach that poor girl to the chariot-wheels of Progress'--his voice put
the drag of ironic pomposity upon the phrase--'you quite ignore the fact
that people fitter for such work, the men you look to enlist in the end,
are ready waiting'--he pulled himself up in time for an anti-climax--'to
give the thing a chance.'

'Men are ready! What men?'

His eyes evaded hers. He picked his words. 'Women have themselves to
blame that the question has grown so delicate that responsible people
shrink for the moment from being implicated in it.'

'We have seen the shrinking.'

'Without quoting any one else, I might point out that the New Antagonism
seems to have blinded you to the small fact that I for one am not an
opponent.'

'The phrase has a familiar ring. We have heard it four hundred and
twenty times.'

His eyes were shining with anger. 'I spoke, if I may say so, of some one
who would count. Some one who can carry his party along with him--or
risk a seat in the cabinet over the issue.'

'Did you mean you are "ready" to do that?' she exclaimed.

'An hour ago I was.'

'Ah! an hour ago!'

'Exactly! You don't understand men. They can be led; they can't be
driven. Ten minutes before you came into the room I was ready to say I
would throw in my political lot with this Reform.'

'And now?'

'Now you block my way by an attempt at coercion. By forcing my hand you
give my adherence an air of bargain-driving for a personal end. Exactly
the mistake of the ignorant agitators in Trafalgar Square. You have a
great deal to learn. This movement will go forward, not because of the
agitation outside, but in spite of it. There are men in Parliament who
would have been actively serving the Reform to-day--as actively as so
vast a constitutional change----'

She smiled faintly. 'And they haven't done it because----'

'Because it would have put a premium on breaches of decent behaviour and
defiance of the law!'

She looked at him with an attempt to appear to accept this version. What
did it matter what reasons were given for past failure, if only the
future might be assured? He had taken a piece of crumpled paper from his
pocket and smoothed it out.

'Look here!' He held the telegram before her.

She flushed with exciteme