“I don’t mind how seriously you talk if I may go on eating.”

“That’s what I brought the buns for.  So that I mayn’t be interrupted.  First of all I want to tell you that you haven’t taken me in.  Other people may be impressed with this Holloway business, but not me.  I’m not moved, or touched, or even interested.”

“Still,” she murmured, “you did get up at three o’clock in the morning.”

“If you think I got up at three o’clock in the morning to show my sympathy, you’re mistaken.”

“Sympathy?  I don’t need your sympathy.  It was worth it, Frank.  There isn’t anything on earth like coming out of prison.  Unless it is going in.”

“That won’t work, Dorothy, when I know why you went in.  It wasn’t to prove your principles.  Your principles were against that sort of thing.  It wasn’t to get votes for women.  You know as well as I do that you’ll never get them that way.  It wasn’t to annoy Mr. Asquith.  You knew Mr. Asquith wouldn’t care a hang.  It was to annoy me.”

“I wonder,” she said dreamily, “if I shall ever be able to stop eating.”

“You can’t take me in.  I know too much about it.  You said you were going to keep out of rows.  You weren’t going on that deputation because it meant a row.  You went because I asked you not to go.”

“I did; and I should go again tomorrow for the same reason.”

“But it isn’t a reason.  It’s not as if I’d asked you to go against your conscience.  Your conscience hadn’t anything to do with it.”

“Oh, hadn’t it!  I went because you’d no right to ask me not to.”

“If I’d had the right you’d have gone just the same.”

“What do you mean by the right?”

“You know perfectly well what I mean.”

“Of course I do.  You mean, and you meant that if I’d married you you’d have had the right, not just to ask me not to, but to prevent me.  That was what I was out against.  I’d be out against it tomorrow and the next day, and for as long as you keep up that attitude.”

“And yet—­you said you loved me.”

“So I did.  So I do.  But I’m out against that too.”

“Good Lord, against what?”

“Against your exploiting my love for your purposes.”

“My poor dear child, what do you suppose I wanted?”

She had reached the uttermost limit of absurdity, and in that moment she became to him helpless and pathetic.

“I knew there was going to be the most infernal row and I wanted to keep you out of it.  Look here, you’d have thought me a rotter if I hadn’t, wouldn’t you?

“Of course you would.  And there’s another thing.  You weren’t straight about it.  You never told me you were going.”

“I never told you I wasn’t.”

“I don’t care, Dorothy; you weren’t straight.  You ought to have told me.”

“How could I tell you when I knew you’d only go trying to stop me and getting yourself arrested.”