“Ah!” he murmured, “you, too, are beginning to understand.  Happiness is only for the ignorant.  For you and for me knowledge has eaten its way too far into our lives.  We climb all the while, but the flowers in the meadows are the fairest.”

She shook her head.

“The little white flower which grows in the mountains is what we must always seek,” she answered.  “The meadows are for the others.”

“We are accursed with this knowledge, and the desire for it,” he declared, fiercely.  “The suffering is for us, and the joy for the beasts of the field.  Why not throw down the cards?  We are the devil’s puppets in this game of life.”

“There is no place for us down there,” she answered, sadly.  “There is joy enough for them, because the finger has never touched their eyes.  But for us—­no, we have to go on!  I was a foolish woman, Lawrence.  I lost my sense of proportion.  Traditions, you see, were hard to break away from.  I did not understand.  Let this be the end of all mention of such things between us.  We have missed the turning, and we must go on.  That is the hardest thing in life.  One can never retrace one’s steps.”

“We go on—­apart?”

“We must,” she said.  “Don’t think me prejudiced, Lawrence.  I must stand by my party.  Theoretically, I think that you are the only logical politician I have ever known.  Actually, I think that you are steering your course towards the sandbanks.  You will fail, but you will fail magnificently.  Well, that is something.”

“It is a good deal,” he answered, “but if I live long enough, and my strength remains, I shall succeed.  I shall place the Government of this country upon an altogether different basis.  I shall empty the work-houses and fill the factories.  Nothing short of that will content me.  Nothing short of that would content any man upon whose shoulders the burden has fallen.”

“You have centuries of prejudice to fight,” she warned him.  “You may not succeed!  Yet you have all my good wishes.  I shall always watch you.”

They turned homeward in silence.  All that had passed between them seemed to be already far back in the past.  Their retrogression seemed almost symbolical.  They spoke of indifferent things.

“Tell me,” he asked, “how you came to know what was going on in Leeds.”

“It was your wife,” she said, “who discovered it!”

“My wife?”

“She saw a telegram on Sir Leslie’s table at breakfast, a telegram from the man Polden.  She read it and demanded an explanation.  Sir Leslie tried all he could to wriggle out of it, but in vain.  She appealed to me.  Even I had a great deal of difficulty in dealing with him, but eventually he gave way.”

“Then the telegram,” Mannering asked, “wasn’t that from you?”

She shook her head.

“It was from your wife,” she said.  “I cannot take much credit for myself.  It is she whom you must thank for your election.  I came out at rather a dramatic moment.  Sir Leslie had just offered her money, five hundred pounds, I think, to give him back his telegram and say nothing.  She appealed to me at once, and Sir Leslie looked positively foolish.”