She shrugged her shoulders.

“Our cause speaks, not I,” she declared.  “Every word I utter is a waste of breath, a task of supererogation.  You can’t associate with Stephen Dartrey for a month without realising for yourself what our party means and stands for.  So—­enough.  I didn’t ask you here to undertake any missionary work.  I asked you, as a matter of fact, for my own pleasure.  Take another cigarette and pass me one, please.  And here’s another cushion,” she added, throwing it to him.  “You look as though you needed it.”  He settled down more comfortably.  He had the pleasant feeling of being completely at his ease.

“So far as entertaining you is concerned,” he confessed, “I fear I am likely to be a failure.  I am beginning to feel like a constant note of interrogation.  There is so much I want to know.”

“Proceed, then.  I am resigned,” she said with a smile.  “About yourself.  I just knew of you as the writer of one or two articles in the reviews.  Why have I never heard more of you?”

“One reason,” she confided, “is because I am so painfully young.  I haven’t had time yet to become a wonderful woman.  You see, I have the tremendous advantage of not having known the world except from underneath a pigtail, while the war was on.  I was able to bring to these new conditions an absolutely unbiassed understanding.”

“But what was your upbringing?” he asked.  “Your father, for instance?”

“Is this going to be a pill for you?” she enquired, with slightly wrinkled forehead.  “He was professor of English at Dresden University.  We were all living there when the war broke out, but he was such a favourite that they let us go to Paris.  He died there, the week after peace was declared.  My mother still lives at Versailles.  She was governess to Lady Clanarton’s grandchildren, hence my presence yesterday in those aristocratic circles.”

“And you live here alone?”

“With my secretary—­the fuzzyhaired young person who was just getting rid of Mr. Miller for me when you arrived.  We are a terribly advanced couple, in our ideas, but we lead a thoroughly reputable life.  I sometimes think,” she went on, with a sigh, “that all one’s tendencies towards the unusual can be got rid of in opinions.  Susan, for instance—­that is my secretary’s name—­pronounces herself unblushingly in favour of free love, but I don’t think she has ever allowed a man to kiss her in her life.”

“Your own opinions?” he asked curiously.  “I suppose they, too, are a little revolutionary, so far as regards our social laws?”

“I dare not even define them,” she acknowledged, “they are so entirely negative.  Somehow or other, I can’t help thinking that the present system will die out through the sheer absurdity of it.  We really shan’t need a crusade against the marriage laws.  The whole system is committing suicide as fast as it can.”

“How old are you?” he asked.