“Shall I see Mr. Bennett?” she asked him eagerly, as they paused by the parapet, looking down upon the grey-brown water swishing under the fast incoming tide.  “I want to.”

“I asked him to dine, but he wouldn’t.  He has gone to a prayer-meeting—­at least I guess so.  There is a famous American evangelist speaking in Westminster to-night—­I am as certain as I ever am of anything that Bennett is there—­dining on Moody and Sankey.  Men are a medley, don’t you think?—­So you liked his speech?”

“How coolly you ask!” she said, laughing.  “Did you?”

He was silent a moment, his smiling gaze fixed on the water.  Then he turned to her.

“How much gratitude do you think I owe him?”

“As much as you can pay,” she said with emphasis.  “I never heard anything more complete, more generous.”

“So you were carried away?”

She looked at him with a curious, sudden gravity—­a touch of defiance.

“No!—­neither by him, nor by you.  I don’t believe in your Bill—­and I am sure you will never carry it!”

Wharton lifted his eyebrows.

“Perhaps you’ll tell me where you are,” he said, “that I may know how to talk?  When we last discussed these things at Mellor, I think—­you were a Socialist?”

“What does it matter what I was last year?” she asked him gaily, yet with a final inflection of the voice which was not gay; “I was a baby! Now perhaps I have earned a few poor, little opinions—­but they are a ragged bundle—­and I have never any time to sort them.”

“Have you left the Venturists?”

“No!—­but I am full of perplexities; and the Cravens, I see, will soon be for turning me out.  You understand—­I know some working folk now!”

“So you did last year.”

“No!”—­she insisted, shaking her head—­“that was all different.  But now I am in their world—­I live with them—­and they talk to me.  One evening in the week I am ‘at home’ for all the people I know in our Buildings—­men and women.  Mrs. Hurd—­you know who I mean?”—­her brow contracted a moment—­“she comes with her sewing to keep me company; so does Edith Craven; and sometimes the little room is packed.  The men smoke—­when we can have the windows open!—­and I believe I shall soon smoke too—­it makes them talk better.  We get all sorts—­Socialists, Conservatives, Radicals—­”

“—­And you don’t think much of the Socialists?”

“Well! they are the interesting, dreamy fellows,” she said, laughing, “who don’t save, and muddle their lives.  And as for argument, the Socialist workman doesn’t care twopence for facts—­that don’t suit him.  It’s superb the way he treats them!”

“I should like to know who does care!” said Wharton, with a shrug.  Then he turned with his back to the parapet, the better to command her.  He had taken off his hat for coolness, and the wind played with the crisp curls of hair.  “But tell me”—­he went on—­“who has been tampering with you?  Is it Hallin?  You told me you saw him often.”