ve my Ford round here
in five minutes. Meet me at the nearest gate."

He went out hurriedly; and as Stephen followed him, after the delay of a
few minutes, he found himself face to face with Patty, who was coming
from "the blue room" on the opposite side of the hall.

"I hope you got what you came for," she said gaily.

"I came for nothing," he retorted lightly, "and I'm sure I got it."

"Well, that won't matter so much since it wasn't for yourself," she
mocked. "Nobody ever wants anything for himself in politics. Father
could tell you that."

"He told me a good many things--but not that."

"Did he tell you," she inquired daringly, "why he is falling out with
Julius Gershom?"

"Is he falling out with him?"

"Didn't you see it--and hear it--when you came in?"

"I suspected as much; but after all it was none of my business."

"And you confine your curiosity to your own business?"

"Not entirely," he answered, and wondered if she were experimenting
with the letter "C". "For instance I am curious about you."

Her eyes challenged him with their old defiance. "And I am certainly not
your business."

"I admit that you are not--but that does not decrease my curiosity."

For a moment her smile grew wistful. "And what, I wonder," she asked,
with the faintest quiver of her cherry-coloured lips, "would you like to
know?"

"Oh, everything!" he replied unhesitatingly. There was no longer in his
mind the slightest wish to avoid the approaching flirtation. On the
contrary, he felt he should welcome it, if she would only continue to
look like this. She was not beautiful--yet he realized that she did not
need beauty when she could play so easily with a look or a smile on the
heartstrings. A rush of tenderness overwhelmed his reserve at the very
instant when her lashes trembled and drooped, and she murmured in a
whisper that enchanted him: "Oh, but everything is too little." Though
it was only the old lure of youth and sex, he felt that it was as
divinely fresh and wonderful as first love.

"Is it too little?" he asked, and his voice sounded so far off that it
was faint in his ears.

She raised her lashes and gave him a glance charged with meaning. "That
depends," she answered, and suddenly, without warning, she passed to the
lightest and gayest of tones. "Everything depends on something else,
doesn't it? Now Father is coming out, and I must run upstairs and
dress."

It was a dismissal, he knew, and yet he hesitated