More than ever it seemed to Tallente that the atmosphere of the room had changed, had become in some subtle way at the same time more enervating and more exciting.  It was like a revelation of a hidden side of the woman, who might indeed have had some purpose of her own in leaving him here.  He set down his empty glass with the feeling that vermouth was a heavier drink than he had fancied.  Then a streak of watery sunshine filtered its way through the plantation and crept across the worn, handsome carpet.  He felt a queer exultation at the sound of her footsteps outside.  She entered, as she had departed, without directly meeting his earnest gaze.

“I hope you have made yourself at home,” she said.  “Dear me, how untidy everything is!”

She moved about, altering the furniture a little, making little piles of the magazines, a graceful, elegant figure in her dark velvet house dress, with a thin band of fur at the neck.  She turned suddenly around and found him watching her.  This time she laughed at him frankly.

“Sit down at once,” she ordered, motioning him back to his easy-chair and coming herself to a corner of the lounge.  “Remember that you have a great deal to tell me and explain.  The newspapers say such queer things.  Is it true that I really am entertaining a possible future Prime Minister?”

“I suppose that might be,” he answered, a little vaguely, his eyes still fixed upon her.  “So this is your room.  I like it.  And I like—­”

“Well, go on, please,” she begged.

“I like the softness of your gown, and I like the fur against your throat and neck, and I like those buckles on your shoes, and the way you do your hair.”

She laughed, gracefully enough, yet with some return to that note of uneasiness.

“You mustn’t turn my head!” she protested.  “You, fresh from London, which they tell me is terribly gay just now!  I want to understand just what it means, your throwing in your lot with the Democrats.  My uncle says, for instance, that you have abandoned respectable politics to become a Tower Hill pedagogue.”

“Respectable politics,” he replied, “if by that you mean the present government of the country, have been in the wrong hands for so long that people scarcely realise what is undoubtedly the fact—­that the country isn’t being governed at all.  A Government with an Opposition Party almost as powerful as itself, all made up of separate parties which are continually demanding sops, can scarcely progress very far, can it?”

“But the Democrats,” she ventured, “are surely only one of these isolated parties?”

“I have formed a different idea of their strength,” he answered.  “I believe that if a general election took place to-morrow, the Democrats would sweep the country.  I believe that we should have the largest working majority any Government has had since the war.”

“How terrible!” she murmured, involuntarily truthful.