er can enjoy a square meal. It isn't the money; it's the
trouble of their lives how to get rid of that. It is the notoriety, the
power that they are out for. In Carleton's case, it is to feel himself
the power behind the throne; to know that he can make and unmake
statesmen; has the keys of peace and war in his pocket; is able to
exclaim: Public opinion? It is I."

"It can be a respectable ambition," suggested Joan.

"It has been responsible for most of man's miseries," he answered. "Every
world's conqueror meant to make it happy after he had finished knocking
it about. We are all born with it, thanks to the devil." He shifted his
position and regarded her with critical eyes. "You've got it badly," he
said. "I can see it in the tilt of your chin and the quivering of your
nostrils. You beware of it."

Miss Greyson left them. She had to finish an article. They debated
"Clorinda's" views; and agreed that, as a practical housekeeper, she
would welcome attention being given to the question of the nation's food.
The _Evening Gazette_ would support Phillips in principle, while
reserving to itself the right of criticism when it came to details.

"What's he like in himself?" he asked her. "You've been seeing something
of him, haven't you?"

"Oh, a little," she answered. "He's absolutely sincere; and he means
business. He won't stop at the bottom of the ladder now he's once got
his foot upon it."

"But he's quite common, isn't he?" he asked again. "I've only met him in
public."

"No, that's precisely what he isn't," answered Joan. "You feel that he
belongs to no class, but his own. The class of the Abraham Lincolns, and
the Dantons."

"England's a different proposition," he mused. "Society counts for so
much with us. I doubt if we should accept even an Abraham Lincoln:
unless in some supreme crisis. His wife rather handicaps him, too,
doesn't she?"

"She wasn't born to be the chatelaine of Downing Street," Joan admitted.
"But it's not an official position."

"I'm not so sure that it isn't," he laughed. "It's the dinner-table that
rules in England. We settle everything round a dinner-table."

She was sitting in front of the fire in a high-backed chair. She never
cared to loll, and the shaded light from the electric sconces upon the
mantelpiece illumined her.

"If the world were properly stage-managed, that's what you ought to be,"
he said, "the wife of a Prime Minister. I can see you giving