“Do you realise this is the first time we have been alone together this month?”

“No?  Really?” She glanced up absently.

“Never mind that muddle-headed old Chelmer.  I dare say she only wants another hundred or two.”  He came over, took the letter and her hand with it.  “I have a great secret to tell you.”

Now he had captured her attention as well as her hand.  Her eyes sparkled.  “A Cabinet Secret?” she said.

“Yes.  At this moment every newspaper office is in a fever—­to-morrow all England will be ringing with the news.  It is a thunderbolt.”

She started up, snatching her hand away, every nerve a-quiver with excitement.  “And you kept this from me all through dinner?”

“I hadn’t a chance, darling—­I came straight from the scrimmage.”

“You won’t gloss it over by calling me novel names.  I hate stale thunderbolts.  You might have breathed a word in my ear.”

“I shall make amends by beginning with the part that is only for your ear.  Do you know what next Monday is?”

“The day you address your constituents, of course.  Oh, I see, this thunderbolt is going to change your speech.”

“Is going to change my speech altogether.  Next Monday is the seventh anniversary of our wedding.”

“Is it?  But what has that to do with your speech at Highmead?”

“Everything.”  He smiled mysteriously, then went on softly, “Amber, do you remember our honeymoon?”

She smiled faintly.  “Oh, I haven’t quite forgotten.”

“If you had quite forgotten the misery of it, I should be glad.”

“I have quite forgotten.”

“You are kinder than I deserve.  But I was so startled to find my career was less to you than a kiss that I was more churlish than I need have been.  I even wished that you might have a child, so that you might be taken up with it instead of with me.”

She blushed.  “Yes, I dare say I showed my hand clumsily as soon as it held all the aces.”

“Ah, Amber, you were an angel and I was a beast.  How gallantly you swallowed your disappointment in your bargain, how loyally you worked heart and soul that I might gain my one ideal—­Power!”

“It was a labour of love,” she said deprecatingly.

“My noble Amber.  But did you think, selfishly engrossed though I have been with the Fight for Power, that this love-labour of yours was lost on me?  No, ‘terrible ambitious’ as I was, I could still see I got the blackberries and you little more than the scratches, and the less you began to press your claim upon my heart, the more my heart was opening out with an answering passion.  I began to watch the play of your eyes, the shimmer of light across your cheek, the roguish pout of your lips, the lock that strayed across your temple—­as it is straying now.”

She pushed it back impatiently.  “But what has all this to do with the Cabinet Secret?”

“Patience, darling!  How much nicer to listen to you than to the Opposition.”