She fingered her pearls for a moment.
"Perhaps I haven't the right to complain," she acknowledged. "I have gone my own way always. But if one is permitted to look for a moment into the past, can you tell me a single hour when work was not the prominent thought in your brain, the idol before which you worshipped? Why, even our honeymoon was spent canvassing!"
"The election was an unexpected one," he reminded her.
"It would have been the same thing," she declared. "The only literature which you really understand is a Blue Book, and the only music you hear is the chiming of Big Ben."
"You speak," he remarked, "as though you resented these things. Yet you knew before you married me that I had ambitions, that I did not propose to lead an idle life."
"Oh, yes, I knew!" she assented drily. "But we are wandering from the point. I am still wondering what has brought you here. Have you come direct from England?"
He shook his head.
"I came to-day from Bordighera."
"More and more mysterious," she murmured. "Bordighera, indeed! I thought you once told me that you hated the Riviera."
"So I do," he agreed.