She looked at him with a peculiar light in her eyes.

“I have proved myself very far from being irresistible,” she declared.  “The man for whose love my whole being is aching to-day is absolutely unawakened as to my desirability.  I enjoy with him the most impersonal friendship in which two people of opposite sexes ever indulged.”

“I thought that I was acquainted with all your intimates,” Dartrey observed, in a puzzled tone.  “Let me meet this man and judge for myself, Nora.”

“Do you mean that?” she asked.

“Certainly.”

“Very well, then,” she acquiesced, “I’ll ask him to dinner here.  When are you free?”

He glanced through a thin memorandum book.

“On Sunday night?”

“At eight o’clock,” she said.  “You won’t mind a simple dinner, I know.  I can promise you that you will be interested.  My friend is worth knowing.”

Dartrey took his departure a little hurriedly.  He had suddenly remembered an appointment at his committee rooms and went off with his mind full of the troubles of a northern constituency.  On his way up Parliament Street he met Miller, who turned and walked by his side.

“Heard the news?” the latter asked curtly.  “No.  Is there any?” was the quick reply.

“Tallente’s broken the truce,” Miller announced.  “There was rather an acid debate on the Compensation Clauses of Hensham’s Allotment Bill.  Tallente pulled them to pieces and then challenged a division.  The Government Whips were fairly caught napping and were beaten by twelve votes.”  Dartrey’s eyes flashed.

“Tallente is a most wonderful tactician,” he said.  “This is the second time he’s forced the Government into a hole.  Horlock will never last the session, at this rate.”

“There are rumours of a resignation, of course,” Miller went on, “but they aren’t likely to go out on a snatched division like this.”

“We don’t want them to,” Dartrey agreed.  “All the time, though, this sort of thing is weakening their prestige.  We shall be ready to give them their coup de grace in about four months.”

The two men were silent for a moment.  Then Miller spoke again a little abruptly.

“I can’t seem to get on with Tallente,” he confessed.

“I am sorry,” Dartrey regretted.  “You’ll have to try, Miller.  We can’t do without him.”

“Try?  I have tried,” was the impatient rejoinder.  “Tallente may have his points but nature never meant him to be a people’s man.  He’s too hidebound in convention and tradition.  Upon my soul, Dartrey, he makes me feel like a republican of the bloodthirsty age, he’s so blasted superior!”

“You’re going back to the smaller outlook, Miller,” his chief expostulated.  “These personal prejudices should be entirely negligible.  I am perfectly certain that Tallente himself would lay no stress upon them.”

“Stress upon them?  Damn it, I’m as good as he is!” Miller exclaimed irritably.  “There’s no harm in Tallente’s ratting, quitting his order and coming amongst us Democrats, but what I do object to is his bringing the mannerisms and outlook of Eton and Oxford amongst us.  When I am with him, he always makes me feel that I am doing the wrong thing and that he knows it.”