give
them their coup de grace in about four months."

The two men were silent for a moment. Then Miller spoke again a little
abruptly.

"I can't seem to get on with Tallente," he confessed.

"I am sorry," Dartrey regretted. "You'll have to try, Miller. We can't
do without him."

"Try? I have tried," was the impatient rejoinder. "Tallente may have
his points but nature never meant him to be a people's man. He's too
hidebound in convention and tradition. Upon my soul, Dartrey, he makes
me feel like a republican of the bloodthirsty age, he's so blasted
superior!"

"You're going back to the smaller outlook, Miller," his chief
expostulated. "These personal prejudices should be entirely negligible.
I am perfectly certain that Tallente himself would lay no stress upon
them."

"Stress upon them? Damn it, I'm as good as he is!" Miller exclaimed
irritably. "There's no harm in Tallente's ratting, quitting his order
and coming amongst us Democrats, but what I do object to is his bringing
the mannerisms and outlook of Eton and Oxford amongst us. When I am
with him, he always makes me feel that I am doing the wrong thing and
that he knows it."

Dartrey frowned a little impatiently.

"This is rubbish, Miller," he pronounced. "It is you who are to blame
for attaching the slightest importance to these trifles."

"Trifles!" Miller growled. "Within a very short time, Dartrey, this
question will have to be settled. Does Tallente know that I am promised
a seat in his Cabinet?"

"I think that he must surmise it."

"The sooner he knows, the better," Miller declared acidly. "Tallente
can unbend all right when he likes. He was dining at the Trocadero the
other night with Brooks and Ainley and Parker and Saunderson--the most
cheerful party in the place. Tallente seemed to have slipped out of
himself, and yet there isn't one of those men who has ever had a day's
schooling or has ever worn anything but ready-made clothes. He leaves
his starch off when he's with them. What's the matter with me, I should
like to know? I'm a college man, even though I did go as an
exhibitioner. I was a school teacher when those fellows were wielding
pick-axes."

Dartrey looked at his companion thoughtfully. For a single moment the
words trembled upon his lips which would have brought things to an
instant and profitless climax. Then he remembered the million or so of
people of Miller's own class and way of thinking, to whom he was a
leading light, an