ce to the window. She had given her jacket and gloves to her maid,
but had kept on her hat; and she leaned forward a little as she sat,
clasping her hands together in her lap and keeping her eyes on him. The
lamp, in a corner, was so thickly veiled that the room was in tempered
obscurity, lighted almost equally from the street and the brilliant
shop-fronts opposite. "Therefore why be sapient and solemn about it,
like an editorial in a newspaper?" Nick added with a smile.

She continued to look at him after he had spoken, then she said: "If you
don't want to stand you've only to say so. You needn't give your
reasons."

"It's too kind of you to let me off that! And then I'm a tremendous
fellow for reasons; that's my strong point, don't you know? I've a lot
more besides those I've mentioned, done up and ready for delivery. The
odd thing is that they don't always govern my behaviour. I rather think
I do want to stand."

"Then what you said just now was a speech," Julia declared.

"A speech?"

"The 'rot,' the humbug of the hustings."

"No, those great truths remain, and a good many others. But an inner
voice tells me I'm in for it. And it will be much more graceful to
embrace this opportunity, accepting your co-operation, than to wait for
some other and forfeit that advantage."

"I shall be very glad to help you anywhere," she went on.

"Thanks awfully," he returned, still standing there with his hands in
his pockets. "You'd do it best in your own place, and I've no right to
deny myself such a help."

Julia calmly considered. "I don't do it badly."

"Ah you're so political!"

"Of course I am; it's the only decent thing to be. But I can only help
you if you'll help yourself. I can do a good deal, but I can't do
everything. If you'll work I'll work with you; but if you're going into
it with your hands in your pockets I'll have nothing to do with you."
Nick instantly changed the position of these members and sank into a
seat with his elbows on his knees. "You're very clever, but you must
really take a little trouble. Things don't drop into people's mouths."

"I'll try--I'll try. I've a great incentive," he admitted.

"Of course you have."

"My mother, my poor mother." Julia breathed some vague sound and he went
on: "And of course always my father, dear good man. My mother's even
more political than you."

"I daresay she is, and quite right!" said Mrs. Dallow.

"And she can't tell me a bit more than you can w