“I mean nothing of the sort,” he said, in quite a different manner, with a sort of gentle and personal emphasis.  “But—­may I explain myself, Miss Boyce, in a room with a fire?  I can see you shivering under your fur.”

For the frost still reigned supreme outside, and the white grass and trees threw chill reflected lights into the forsaken library.  Marcella controlled a pulse of excitement that had begun to beat in her, admitted that it was certainly cold, and led the way through a side door to a little flagged parlour, belonging to the oldest portion of the house, where, however, a great log-fire was burning, and some chairs drawn up round it.  She took one and let the fur wrap she had thrown about her for their promenade through the disused rooms drop from her shoulders.  It lay about her in full brown folds, giving special dignity to her slim height and proud head.  Wharton glancing about in his curious inquisitive way, now at the neglected pictures, now on the walls, now at the old oak chairs and chests, now at her, said to himself that she was a splendid and inspiring creature.  She seemed to be on the verge of offence with him too, half the time, which was stimulating.  She would have liked, he thought, to play the great lady with him already, as Aldous Raeburn’s betrothed.  But he had so far managed to keep her off that plane—­and intended to go on doing so.

“Well, I meant this,” he said, leaning against the old stone chimney and looking down upon her; “only don’t be offended with me, please.  You are a Socialist, and you are going—­some day—­to be Lady Maxwell.  Those combinations are only possible to women.  They can sustain them, because they are imaginative—­not logical.”

She flushed.

“And you,” she said, breathing quickly, “are a Socialist and a landlord.  What is the difference?”

He laughed.

“Ah! but I have no gift—­I can’t ride the two horses, as you will be able to—­quite honestly.  There’s the difference.  And the consequence is that with my own class I am an outcast—­they all hate me.  But you will have power as Lady Maxwell—­and power as a Socialist—­because you will give and take.  Half your time you will act as Lady Maxwell should, the other half like a Venturist.  And, as I said, it will give you power—­a modified power.  But men are less clever at that kind of thing.”

“Do you mean to say,” she asked him abruptly, “that you have given up the luxuries and opportunities of your class?”

He shifted his position a little.

“That is a different matter,” he said after a moment.  “We Socialists are all agreed, I think, that no man can be a Socialist by himself.  Luxuries, for the present, are something personal, individual.  It is only a man’s ‘public form’ that matters.  And there, as I said before, I have no gift!—­I have not a relation or an old friend in the world that has not turned his back upon me—­as you might see for yourself yesterday!  My class has renounced me already—­which, after all, is a weakness.”