“To go to him and find out what he means, what influences have been at work, what is underneath it all.  Warn him of the danger of even appearing doubtful, or for a moment lukewarm.  The one person whom the public will not have in politics is the trifler.  Think how many there have been, brilliant men, too, who have lost their places through a single false step, a single year, a month of dilettantism.  Remind him of them.  The man who moves in a great cause may move slowly, if you will, but he must move all the time.  Remind him, too, that he is risking the one great chance of his life!”

“He is to be Premier, then?” she asked.

“Yes!  There is no alternative!”

“Very well, then,” she said, “I will go.  I make no promises, mind.  I will listen to what he has to say.  I will put our view of the situation before him.  But I make no promises.  It is possible, even, that I shall come to his point of view, whatever it may be.”

Borrowdean smiled.

“I have no fear of that,” he declared, “but at least it would be something to know what this point of view is.  You will find him in a queer mood.  That little fool of a niece of his has been getting in with a fast set, and making the money fly.  You have heard of her last escapade at Bristow?”

Berenice nodded.

“Yes,” she said.  “I went there this morning directly I had your note.  I feel rather self-reproachful about Clara Mannering.  I meant to have looked after her more.  She is rather an uninteresting young woman, though, and I am afraid I have let her drift away.”

“She will be all right with a little looking after,” Borrowdean said.  “Forgive me, but it is getting late.”

“I will go at once,” she said.

* * * * *

Afterwards she wondered often at that strange, uncertain fluttering of the heart, the rush and glow of feelings warmer than any which had lately stirred her, which seemed in those first few minutes of their being together, to make an altered woman of her.  Mannering, as he entered the room, pale and listless, was conscious at once of a foreign element in it, something which stirred his somewhat slow-beating pulse, too, which seemed to bring back to him a flood of delicious memories, the perfume of his rose-gardens at evening, the soft night music of his wind-stirred cedars.  She had thrown aside her opera cloak.  The delicate lines of her bust seemed to have expanded with the unusual rise and fall of her bosom.  A faint rose-tint flush of streaming colour had stained the ivory whiteness of her skin—­her eyes as they sought his were soft, almost liquid.  They met so seldom alone—­and she was alone now with him in the room which was so characteristically his own, a room with many indications of his constant presence, which one by one she had been realizing with curiously quickened pulses during the few minutes of waiting.  On her way here, driving in an open victoria, through