"What devilish impulse," he muttered, "leads these men to pass into your rotten English politics! It is like a poet trying to navigate a dredger. Bah!"
"Need you go into that gloomy chamber again, my friend?"
Maraton shook his head.
"I have finished," he declared. "There will be no division."
"But do you never speak there?"
"Up to now I have not uttered more than a dozen words or so," Maraton replied. "You try it yourself—try speaking to a crowd of well-dressed, well-fed, smug units of respectability, each with his mind full of his own affairs or the affairs of his constituency. You try it. You wouldn't find the words stream, I can tell you."
Selingman grunted.
"And now—what now?"
"To my rooms—to my house," Maraton announced, "while I change."
"It is good. I shall talk to your secretary. I shall talk to Miss
Julia while you disappear. Shall I rob you, my friend?"