Tallente smiled a little grimly.

“He took particularly good care that I should know that.”

“Well, there you are,” Williams went on.  “The Chief’s fed up.  I can talk to you here freely because I’m not an official person.  Can you discuss terms at all for a rapprochement?”

“Out of the question!”

“You mean that you are too much committed to Dartrey and the Democrats?”

“‘Committed’ to them is scarcely the correct way of putting it,” Tallente objected.  “Their principles are in the main my principles.  They stand for the cause I have championed all my life.  Our alliance is a natural, almost an automatic one.”

“It’s all very well, sir,” Williams argued, “but Dartrey stands for a Labour Party, pure and simple.  You can’t govern an Empire by parish council methods.”

“That is where the Democrats come in,” Tallente pointed out.  “They have none of the narrower outlook of the Labour Party as you understand it—­of any of the late factions of the Labour Party, perhaps I should say.  The Democrats possess an international outlook.  When they legislate, every class will receive its proper consideration.  No class will be privileged.  A man will be ranked according to his production.”

Williams smiled with the faint cynicism of clairvoyant youth.

“Sounds a little Utopian, sir,” he ventured.  “What about Miller?”

“Well, what about him?”

“Are you going to serve with him?”

“Really,” Tallente protested, “for a political opponent, or the representative of a political opponent, you’re a trifle on the inquisitive side.”

“It’s a matter that you’ll have to face sometime or other,” the young man asserted.  “I happen to know that Dartrey is committed to Miller.”

“I don’t see how you can happen to know anything of the sort,” Tallente declared, a little bluntly.  “In any case, Spencer, my political association or nonassociation with Miller is entirely my own affair, and you can hook it.  Remember me to all your people, and give my love to Muriel.”

“Nothing doing, eh?” Williams observed, rising reluctantly to his feet.

“You have perception,” Tallente replied.

“The Chief was afraid you might be a little difficult about an interview.  Those pressmen are an infernal nuisance, anyway.  What about sneaking into Downing Street at about midnight, in a cloak and slouch hat, eh?”

“Too much of the cinema about you, young fellow,” Tallente scoffed.  “Run along now.  I have to dress.”

Tallente held out his hand good-humouredly.  His visitor made no immediate motion to take it.

“There was just one thing more I was asked to mention, sir,” he said.  “I will be quite frank if I may.  My instructions were not to allude to it if your attitude were in the least conciliatory.”

“Go on,” Tallente bade him curtly.