the
Factory Amendment Act, he could be lucid, explanatory and convincing; as
to the justice of the same clause when compared with other forms of
legislation, he was vague and unconvincing, didactic and prejudiced. If
Dartrey's object had been to bring these two men into closer
understanding of each other, he was certainly succeeding. It is
doubtful, however, whether the understanding progressed entirely in the
fashion he had desired. Nora, curled up in an easy-chair, affecting to
be sleepy, but still listening earnestly, felt at last that intervention
was necessary. The self-revelation of Miller under Tallente's surgical
questioning was beginning to disturb even their host.

"I am being neglected," she complained. "If no one talks to me, I shall
go home."

Tallente rose at once and sat on the lounge by her side. Dartrey stood
on the hearth rug and plunged into an ingenious effort to reconcile
various points of difference which had arisen between his two guests.
Tallente all the time was politely acquiescent, Miller a little sullen.
Like all men with brains acute enough to deal logically with a
procession of single problems, he resented because he failed altogether
to understand that a wider field of circumstances could possibly alter
human vision.

Tallente walked home with Nora. They chose the longer way, by the
Embankment.

"This is the Cockney's antithesis to the moonlight and hills of you
country folk," Nora observed, as she pointed to the yellow lights
gashing across the black water.

Tallente drew a long breath of content.

"It's good to be here, anyway. I am glad to be out of that house," he
confessed.

"I'm afraid," she sighed, "that our dear host's party was a failure.
You and Miller were born in different camps of life. It doesn't seem to
me that anything will ever bring you together."

"For this reason," Tallente explained eagerly. "Miller's outlook is
narrow and egotistical. He may be a shrewd politician, but there isn't
a grain of statesmanship in him. He might make an excellent chairman of
a parish council. As a Cabinet Minister he would be impossible."

"He will demand office, I am afraid," Nora remarked.

Tallente took off his hat. He was watching the lights from the two
great hotels, the red fires from the funnel of a little tug, Mack and
mysterious in the windy darkness.

"I am sick of politics," he declared suddenly. "We are a parcel of
fools. Our feet move day and night to the solemn m