“You must come home with me for a minute or two, Maraton,” Mr. Foley urged.  “It is on your way.”

The coupe, however, was already occupied.  Elisabeth leaned out of the window.  She held the door open.

“I am going to take Mr. Maraton back with me,” she insisted.  “The car is there for you, uncle.”

Mr. Foley smiled.

“Quite right,” he assented.  “Get in, Maraton.  I shall be home before you.”

Maraton obeyed, and they glided out of the Palace yard.

“I was there all the time,” Elisabeth told him quietly.  “I heard everything.  I was so glad, so proud.  Even your Labour Members had to come and shake hands with you.”

“I don’t think Mr. Dale liked it,” he remarked, smiling.  “They are not bad fellows at heart, but they’ve got the poison in their systems which seems, somehow or other, to become part of the equipment of the politician—­self-interest, over-egotism, contraction of interest.  It makes one almost afraid.”

She leaned a little towards him.

“You will not fear anything,” she whispered confidently.  “To-night, as I looked down, it seemed to me that as a looker-on I saw more, perhaps, of the real significance of it all than you who were there.  It is a new force, you know, which has come into politics, a new Party.  I suppose historians will call to-night, the fusion of Parties which is going to happen, an extraordinary triumph for Mr. Foley.  Perhaps he deserves it—­in my heart I believe that he does—­but not in the way they would try to make out.”

“His heart is right,” Maraton declared.  “He has wide sympathies and splendid understanding.”

“It is a new chapter which begins to-night,” she repeated.  “You will have many disappointments to face, both of you.”

“But isn’t it a glorious fight!” he exclaimed enthusiastically.  “A great cause at one’s back, a future filled with magnificent possibilities!  Lady Elisabeth,” he went on, “you can’t imagine what this hour means.  Sometimes I have had moments of horrible depression.  It is so easy to feel the sorrows of the people in one’s heart, so easy to stir them into a passionate apprehension of their position.  And then comes the dull, sickening doubt whether, after all, it had not been better to leave them as they were.  Of what use are words—­that is what I have felt so often.  And now there has come the power to do great things for them.  Life couldn’t hold anything more splendid.”

Her hand touched his.  She had withdrawn her glove.

“You will let me help?” she begged.

He turned towards her then, and she saw the light in his face for which she had longed.  With a little cry her head sank upon his shoulder, and his arms closed around her.

“I am almost jealous of the people,” she murmured.  “Only I want you to teach me to love them and feel for them as you do.  I want to feel that the same thing in our lives is bringing us always closer together.”