“Nothing else?” Tallente asked, smiling.

There was a momentary cloud upon her face.

“Nothing else in the world,” she answered, her eyes fixed upon the figure of the man who was leaning now over the grey stone wall, gazing seaward.

During the service of the meal, on the terrace afterwards, and even when they strolled down to the edge of the cliff to see the great yellow moon come up from behind the hills, scarcely a word was spoken on political subjects.  Dartrey was an Oxford man of Tallente’s own college, and, although several years his senior, they discovered many mutual acquaintances and indulged in reminiscences which seemed to afford pleasure to both.  Then they drifted into literature, and Tallente found himself amazed at the knowledge of the man whose whole life was supposed to have been given to his labours for the people.  Dartrey explained his intimate acquaintance with certain modern writings and his marvellous familiarity with many of the classics, as he and his host walked down together along one of the narrow paths.  “You see, Tallente,” he said, “I have never been a practical politician.  I dare say that accounts for my rather peculiar position to-day.  I have evolved a whole series of social laws by which I maintain that the people should be governed, and those laws have been accepted wherever socialism flourishes.  They took me some years of my earlier life to elaborate, some years of study before I set pen to paper, some years of my later life to place before the world, and there my task practically ended.  There is nothing fresh to say about these great human problems.  They are there for any man to whom daylight comes, to see.  They are all inevitably bound up with the future of our race, but there is no need to dig further.  My work is done.”

“How can you say that,” Tallente argued, “when day by day your power in the country grows, when everything points to you as the next Premier?”

“Precisely,” Dartrey replied quietly.  “That is why I am here.  The head of the Democratic Party has a right to the government of this country, but you know, at this point I have a very sad confession to make.  I am the worst politician who ever sat in the House.  I am a poor debater, a worse strategist.  Again, Tallente, that is why you and I at this moment walk together through your beautiful grounds and watch the rim of that yellow moon.  It is yourself we want.”

Tallente felt the thrill of the moment, felt the sincerity of the man whose hand pressed gently upon his arm.

“If you are our man, Tallente,” his visitor continued, “if you see eye to eye with us as to the great Things, if you can cast away what remains to you of class and hereditary prejudice and throw in your lot with ours, there is no office of the State which you may not hope to occupy.  I had not meant to appeal to your ambitions.  I do so now only generally.  As a rule, every man connected with a revolution thinks himself able to govern the State.  That is not so with us.  A man may have the genius for seeing the truth, the genius even for engraving the laws which should govern the world upon tablets of stone, without having the capacity for government.”