“How good of you!” she murmured.  “I scarcely hoped that you would come.  You have been with Maxendorf?”

He nodded.

“Is it a confession?” he asked.  “It was Mr. Foley’s first question to me.”

“It is because we hate and distrust the man,” she replied.  “You aren’t a politician, you see, Mr. Maraton.  You don’t quite appreciate some of the forces which are making an old man of my uncle to-day, which make life almost intolerable for many of us when we think seriously,” she went on simply.

“Aren’t you exaggerating that sentiment just a little?” he suggested.

“Not a particle,” she assured him.  “However, you came here to be entertained, didn’t you?  I won’t croak to you any more.  I think I have done my duty for this evening.  Let us find a corner and talk like ordinary human beings.  Are you going in to supper?”

“I hadn’t thought of it,” he admitted.

“I dined at seven o’clock,” she told him.  “We seem to have provided supper for hundreds of people, and I am sure not half of them are coming.”

They passed through two of the rooms into a long, low apartment which led into the winter gardens.  At one end refreshments were being served, and the rest of the space was taken up with little tables.  Elisabeth led him to one placed just inside the winter garden.  A footman filled their glasses with champagne.

“Now we are going to be normal human beings,” she declared.  “How much I wish that you really were a normal human being!”

“In what respect am I different?”

“You know quite well,” she answered.  “I should like you to be what you seem to be—­just a capable, clever, rising politician, with a place in the Cabinet before you, working for your country, sincere, free from all these strange notions.”

“Working for my country,” he repeated.  “That is just the difficult part of the whole situation, nowadays.  I know that I am rather a trouble to your uncle.  Sometimes I fear that I may become even a greater trouble.  It is so hard to adopt the attitude which you suggest when one feels the intolerable situation which exists in that country.”

“But we are on the highroad now to great reforms,” she reminded him.  “Another decade of years, and the people whom you worship will surely be lifting their heads.”

He smiled as she looked across at him with a puzzled air.

“It is strange,” she remarked, “that you, too, have the appearance of a man dissatisfied with himself.  I wonder why?  Surely you must feel that everything has gone your way since you came to England?”

“I am not sure how I feel about it,” he replied.  “Think!  I came with different ideas.  I came with a religion which admitted no compromises, and I have accepted a compromise.”

“A wise and a sane one,” she declared, almost passionately.  “And to-night—­tell me, am I not right?—­to-night there have been those who have sought to upset it in your mind.”