“And thank you, dear perfect hostess,” he answered.  “Do you know what you did?  You created an atmosphere in which it was possible to think and talk and see things clearly.  Do you realise what has happened?  Dartrey has done a great thing.  He has thrown over the one menacing power in the advancing cause of the people.  He is going to back me against Miller.”

“What exactly is Miller’s position?” she asked.

“Let me tell you another time,” he begged.  “I have looked forward so to these few minutes with you.  Tell me how much time you are going to spare me this next week?”

She looked at him with the slight, indulgent smile of a woman realising and glad to realise her power.  To Tallente she had never seemed more utterly and entirely desirable.  It was not for him to know that a French modiste had woven all the cunning and diablerie of the sex lure into the elegant shape, the apparent simplicity of the black velvet which draped her limbs.  In some mysterious way, the same spirit seemed to have entered into Jane herself.  The evening had been one of unalloyed pleasure.  She felt the charm of her companion more than ever before.  The pleasant light in her eyes, the courteous, half-mocking phrases with which, as a rule, she fenced herself about in those moments when he sought to draw her closer to him, were gone.  Her eyes were as bright as ever, but softer.  Her mouth was firm, yet somehow with a faint, womanly voluptuousness in its sweet curves.  The fingers which lay unresistingly in his hand were soft and warm.

“As much time as you can spare,” she promised him.  “I thought, though, that you would be busy tearing Miller bone from bone.”

“The game of politics is played slowly,” he answered, “sometimes so slowly that one chafes.  Dear Jane, I want to see you all the time.  So much of what is best in me, best and most effective, comes from you.”

“If I can help, I am proud,” she whispered.

“You help more than you will ever know, more than my lips can tell you.  It is you who have lit the lamp again in my life, you from whom come the fire and strength which make me feel that I shall triumph, that I shall achieve the one thing I have set my heart upon.”

“The one thing?” she murmured rashly.

“The one thing outside,” he answered, “the desire of my brain.  The desire of my heart is here.”

She lay in his arms, her lips moved to his and the moments passed uncounted.  Then, with a queer little cry, she stood up, covered her face for a moment with her hands and then held them both out to him.

“Dear man,” she begged, “dearest of all men—­will you go now?  To-morrow—­whenever you have time—­let your servant ring up.  I will free myself from any engagement—­but please!”

He kissed her fingers and passed out with a murmured word.  He knew so little of women and yet some wonderful instinct kept him always in the right path.  Perhaps, too, he feared speech himself, lest the ecstasy of those few moments might be broken.