earnestly, "I am glad that I am here to point out
to you a colossal mistake from which you and many others are suffering.
The Democrats do not represent Labour only."

"The small shopkeepers?" she suggested.

"Nothing of the sort," he replied. "The influence of my party has
spread far deeper and further. We number amongst our adherents the
majority of the professional classes and the majority of the thinking
people amongst the community of moderate means. Why, if you consider
the legislation of the last seven or eight years, you will see how they
have been driven to embrace some sort of socialism. Nothing so
detestable and short-sighted as our financial policy has ever been known
in the history of the world. The middle classes, meaning by the middle
classes professional men and men of moderate means, bore the chief
burden of the war. They submitted to terrible taxation, to many
privations, besides the universal gift of their young blood. We won the
war and what was the result? The wealth of the country, through ghastly
legislation, drifted into the hands of the profiteering classes, the
wholesale shopkeepers, the ship owners, the factory owners, the mine
owners. The professional man with two thousand a year was able to save
a quarter of that before the war. After the war, taxation demanded that
quarter and more for income tax, thrust upon him an increased cost of
living, cut the ground from beneath his feet. It isn't either of the
two extremes--the aristocrat or the labouring man--where you must look
for the pulse of a country's prosperity. It is to the classes in
between, and, Lady Jane, they are flocking to our camp just as fast as
they can, just as fast as the country is heading for ruin under its
present Government."

"You are very convincing," she admitted. "Why have you not spoken so
plainly in the House?"

"The moment hasn't arrived," Tallente replied. "There will be a General
Election before many months have passed and that will be the end of the
present fools' paradise at St. Stephen's."

"And then?"

"We shan't abuse our power," he assured her. "What we aim at is a
National Party which will consider the interests of every class. That
is our reading of the term 'Democrat.' Our programme is not nearly so
revolutionary as you are probably led to believe, but we do mean to
smooth away, so far as we can from a practical point of view, the
inequalities of life. We want to sweep away the last remnants of
feu