ody. But about that Mary was not sure.

Westminster is certainly the nicest part of London; there are bits of
it that remind one of Redmarley. It would be pleasant to be rich and
important, and feel that you are helping to pull the wires that control
destinies; helping to make history. Ah, that was what Reggie called
it. He would do it. She was sure of that; but Reggie's wife would
have no hand in it.

With clear intuition she saw that of these two men, only one could be
influenced by his wife in anything that concerned his work. Reggie's
wife would be outside all that. Eloquent's wife, _if she were the
right woman_, would share everything: and at that moment Parker began
to bark, and Mary found that she had walked into a part of the wood
called the Forty Firs, and that Eloquent Gallup was standing right on
the very same spot, where seven months ago she had assisted him to rise
from a puddle.

Parker didn't like Eloquent upright a bit better than he had liked
Eloquent prone, and he made a great yapping and growling and bouncing
and skirmishing around about the two of them, until he finally subsided
into suspicious sniffing at Eloquent's ankles.

"Has Parliament risen then?" Mary asked, when she had soothed Parker to
quiescence.

"No, Miss Ffolliot, I came down"--Eloquent's eyes were fixed hungrily
on her face, and she noticed that his was nothing like so round as it
used to be, and that he was very pale--"because I couldn't keep away."

Mary said nothing. There seemed nothing to say.

"Miss Ffolliot," Eloquent said again, "I think you must know why I have
come down, what I feel about you, what I have felt about you since the
first minute I saw you in this very place, when I was so ridiculous and
you so beautiful and kind. I have travelled a good way since then, but
I know that in caring for you as I do I am still ridiculous, and it is
only because you are so beautiful and kind, although you are so far
above me, that I dare to tell you what I feel . . . but I would like
your leave to think about you. Somehow, without it, it seems an
impertinence, and, God knows, no man ever felt more worship for a woman
than I feel for you. Do you give me that leave?"

Mary was very much touched, very much shaken. Eloquent's power lay in
his immense earnestness. She no longer saw him small and insignificant
and common. She saw the soul of him, and recognised that it was a
great soul. For one brief moment she wonde