“Brute! jealous, impracticable brute!” exclaimed Wharton aloud, as he stood chafing and smoking by the window.  All the difficulties which this open breach was likely to sow in his path stood out before him in clear relief.

“Personal leadership, there is the whole problem,” he said to himself in moody despair.  “Can I—­like Parnell—­make a party and keep it together?  Can I through the Clarion—­and through influence outside the House—­coerce the men in the House?  If so, we can do something, and Lady Cradock will no longer throw me her smiles.  If not the game is up, both for me and for them.  They have no cohesion, no common information, no real power.  Without leaders they are a mere set of half-educated firebrands whom the trained mind of the country humours because it must, and so far as they have brute force behind them.  Without leadership, I am a mere unit of the weakest group in the House.  Yet, by Jove! it looks as though I had not the gifts.”

And he looked back with passionate chagrin on the whole course of his connection with Wilkins, his unavailing concessions and small humiliations, his belief in his own tact and success, all the time that the man dealt with was really slipping out of his hands.

“Damn the fellow!” he said at last, flinging his cigarette away.  “Well, that’s done with.  All the same, he would have liked that Midland job!  He has been hankering after a strike there for some time, and might have ranted as he pleased.  I shall have the satisfaction of informing him he has lost his opportunity.  Now then—­who to send?  By Jove! what about Miss Boyce’s friend?”

He stood a moment twisting the quill-pen he had taken up, then he hastily found a sheet of paper and wrote: 

“Dear Miss Boyce,—­It is more than a year since I have heard of you, and I have been wondering with much interest lately whether you have really taken up a nursing life.  You remember speaking to me of your friends the Cravens?  I come across them sometimes at the Venturist meetings, and have always admired their ability.  Last year I could do nothing practical to meet your wishes.  This year, however, there is an opening on the Clarion, and I should like to discuss it with you.  Are you in town or to be found?  I could come any afternoon next week, early—­I go down to the House at four—­or on Saturdays.  But I should like it to be Tuesday or Wednesday, that I might try and persuade you to come to our Eight Hours debate on Friday night.  It would interest you, and I think I could get you a seat.  We Labour members are like the Irishmen—­we can always get our friends in.

“I must send this round by Mellor, so it may not reach you till Tuesday.  Perhaps you will kindly telegraph.  The Clarion matter is pressing.

  “Yours sincerely,

  “H.S.  WHARTON.”

When he had finished he lingered a moment over the letter, the play of conflicting motives and memories bringing a vague smile to the lips.