Her nerve suddenly deserted her.  She bent over the parapet, and, taking up a tiny stone that lay near, she threw it unsteadily into the river.  He saw the hand shake.

“Look here,” he said, turning round so that he too leant over the river, his arms on the parapet, his voice close to her ear.  “Are you always going to quarrel with me like this?  Don’t you know that there is no one in the world I would sooner please if I could?”

She did not speak.

“In the first place,” he said, laughing, “as to my speech, do you suppose that I believe in that Bill which I described just now?”

“I don’t know,” she said indignantly, once more playing with the stones on the wall.  “It sounded like it.”

“That is my gift—­my little carillon, as Renan would say.  But do you imagine I want you or any one else to tell me that we shan’t get such a Bill for generations?  Of course we shan’t!”

“Then why do you make farcical speeches, bamboozling your friends and misleading the House of Commons?”

He saw the old storm-signs with glee—­the lightning in the eye, the rose on the cheek.  She was never so beautiful as when she was angry.

“Because, my dear lady—­we must generate our force.  Steam must be got up—­I am engaged in doing it.  We shan’t get a compulsory eight hours’ day for all trades—­but in the course of the agitation for that precious illusion, and by the help of a great deal of beating of tom-toms, and gathering of clans, we shall get a great many other things by the way that we do want.  Hearten your friends, and frighten your enemies—­there is no other way of scoring in politics—­and the particular score doesn’t matter.  Now don’t look at me as if you would like to impeach me!—­or I shall turn the tables. I am still fighting for my illusions in my own way—­you, it seems, have given up yours!”

But for once he had underrated her sense of humour.  She broke into a low merry laugh which a little disconcerted him.

“You mock me?” he said quickly—­“think me insincere, unscrupulous?—­Well, I dare say!  But you have no right to mock me.  Last year, again and again, you promised me guerdon.  Now it has come to paying—­and I claim!”

His low distinct voice in her ear had a magnetising effect upon her.  She slowly turned her face to him, overcome by—­yet fighting against—­memory.  If she had seen in him the smallest sign of reference to that scene she hated to think of, he would have probably lost this hold upon her on the spot.  But his tact was perfect.  She saw nothing but a look of dignity and friendship, which brought upon her with a rush all those tragic things they had shared and fought through, purifying things of pity and fear, which had so often seemed to her the atonement for, the washing away of that old baseness.

He saw her face tremble a little.  Then she said proudly—­

“I promised to be grateful.  So I am.”