eeable voice which
made him promptly sit down again.

She was full of interest, of abandon, curiosity, and weakness. He
blushed, turned pale, and again got up.

Then, in order to keep him still longer, she looked at him out of two
grey and melting eyes, and though her bosom was heaving, she did not say
another word. He fell at her feet in distraction, but once more looking
at his watch, he jumped up with a terrible oath.

"D--! a quarter to four! I must be off."

And immediately he rushed down the stairs.

From that time onwards she had a certain amount of esteem for him.

IV. A POLITICIAN'S MARRIAGE

She was not quite in love with him, but she wished him to be in love
with her. She was, moreover, very reserved with him, and that not solely
from any want of inclination to be otherwise, since in affairs of
love some things are due to indifference, to inattention, to woman's
instinct, to traditional custom and feeling, to a desire to try one's
power, and to satisfaction at seeing its results. The reason of her
prudence was that she knew him to be very much infatuated and capable
of taking advantage of any familiarities she allowed as well as of
reproaching her coarsely afterwards if she discontinued them.

As he was a professed anti-clerical and free-thinker, she thought it
a good plan to affect an appearance of piety in his presence and to
be seen with prayer-books bound in red morocco, such as Queen Marie
Leczinska's or the Dauphiness Marie Josephine's "The Last Two Weeks of
Lent." She lost no opportunity, either, of showing him the subscriptions
that she collected for the endowment of the national cult of St.
Orberosia. Eveline did not act in this way because she wished to tease
him. Nor did it spring from a young girl's archness, or a spirit of
constraint, or even from snobbishness, though there was more than
a suspicion of this latter in her behaviour. It was but her way of
asserting herself, of stamping herself with a definite character, of
increasing her value. To rouse the Deputy's courage she wrapped herself
up in religion, just as Brunhild surrounded herself with flames so as to
attract Sigurd. Her audacity was successful. He thought her still more
beautiful thus. Clericalism was in his eyes a sign of good form.

Ceres was re-elected by an enormous majority and returned to a House
which showed itself more inclined to the Left, more advanced, and, as it
seemed, more eager for reform than its prede