fearless kindly face with
its flashing eyes and its humorous mouth. He ought to have been drinking
out of a horn, not a wine glass that his well-shaped hand could have
crushed by a careless pressure. In a winged helmet and a coat of mail he
would have looked so much more fitly dressed than in that soft felt hat
and ridiculous blue tie.

She led him to talk on about the future. She loved to hear his clear,
confident voice with its touch of boyish boastfulness. What was there to
stop him? Why should he not climb from power to power till he had
reached the end!

And as he talked and dreamed there grew up in her heart a fierce anger.
What would her own future be? She would marry probably some man of her
own class, settle down to the average woman's "life"; be allowed, like a
spoilt child, to still "take an interest" in public affairs: hold
"drawing-rooms" attended by cranks and political nonentities: be
President, perhaps, of the local Woman's Liberal League. The
alternative: to spend her days glued to a desk, penning exhortations to
the people that Carleton and his like might or might not allow them to
read; while youth and beauty slipped away from her, leaving her one of
the ten thousand other lonely, faded women, forcing themselves unwelcome
into men's jobs. There came to her a sense of having been robbed of what
was hers by primitive eternal law. Greyson had been right. She did love
power--power to serve and shape the world. She would have earned it and
used it well. She could have helped him, inspired him. They would have
worked together: he the force and she the guidance. She would have
supplied the things he lacked. It was to her he came for counsel, as it
was. But for her he would never have taken the first step. What right
had this poor brainless lump of painted flesh to share his wounds, his
triumphs? What help could she give him when the time should come that he
should need it?

Suddenly he broke off. "What a fool I'm making of myself," he said. "I
always was a dreamer."

She forced a laugh. "Why shouldn't it come true?" she asked.

They had the little garden to themselves. The million lights of Paris
shone below them.

"Because you won't be there," he answered, "and without you I can't do
it. You think I'm always like I am to-night, bragging, confident. So I
am when you are with me. You give me back my strength. The plans and
hopes and dreams that were slipping from me come crowd