eneration. His only real cleverness is an unerring but selfish
capacity for attaching himself to the right cause. We can't ignore him.
He has a following. On the other hand, he does not represent our
principles any more than Pitt would if he were still alive."

"What will be your position really as regards the two main sections of
the Labour Party?" he asked. "We are absorbing the best of them, day by
day," she answered quickly. "What is left of either will be merely the
scum. The people will come to us. Their discarded leaders can crawl
back to obscurity. The people may follow false gods for a very long
time, but they have the knack of recognising the truth when it is shown
them."

"You have the gift of conviction," he said thoughtfully.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Our cause speaks, not I," she declared. "Every word I utter is a waste
of breath, a task of supererogation. You can't associate with Stephen
Dartrey for a month without realising for yourself what our party means
and stands for. So--enough. I didn't ask you here to undertake any
missionary work. I asked you, as a matter of fact, for my own pleasure.
Take another cigarette and pass me one, please. And here's another
cushion," she added, throwing it to him. "You look as though you needed
it." He settled down more comfortably. He had the pleasant feeling of
being completely at his ease.

"So far as entertaining you is concerned," he confessed, "I fear I am
likely to be a failure. I am beginning to feel like a constant note of
interrogation. There is so much I want to know."

"Proceed, then. I am resigned," she said with a smile. "About
yourself. I just knew of you as the writer of one or two articles in
the reviews. Why have I never heard more of you?"

"One reason," she confided, "is because I am so painfully young. I
haven't had time yet to become a wonderful woman. You see, I have the
tremendous advantage of not having known the world except from
underneath a pigtail, while the war was on. I was able to bring to
these new conditions an absolutely unbiassed understanding."

"But what was your upbringing?" he asked. "Your father, for instance?"

"Is this going to be a pill for you?" she enquired, with slightly
wrinkled forehead. "He was professor of English at Dresden University.
We were all living there when the war broke out, but he was such a
favourite that they let us go to Paris. He died there, the week after
peace was declared. My mother sti