"The Chief will be sorry," Williams said. "So am I. Will you go round to Downing Street and see him afterwards?"
"I could," Tallente admitted, "but why? I have nothing to say to him. I can't conceive what he could have to say to me. There are always pressmen loitering about Downing Street, who would place the wrong construction on my visit. You saw all the rubbish they wrote because he and I talked together for a quarter of an hour at Mrs. Van Fosdyke's?"
"I know all about that," Williams assented, "but this time, Tallente, there's something in it. The Chief quarrelled with you for the sake of the old gang. Well, he made a bloomer. The old gang aren't worth six-pence. They're rather a hindrance than help to legislation, and when they're wanted they're wobbly, as you saw this afternoon. Lethbridge went into the lobby with you."
Tallente smiled a little grimly.
"He took particularly good care that I should know that."
"Well, there you are," Williams went on. "The Chief's fed up. I can talk to you here freely because I'm not an official person. Can you discuss terms at all for a rapprochement?"
"Out of the question!"
"You mean that you are too much committed to Dartrey and the Democrats?"
"'Committed' to them is scarcely the correct way of putting it,"
Tallente objected. "Their principles are in the main my principles.
They stand for the cause I have championed all my life. Our alliance is
a natural, almost an automatic one."
"It's all very well, sir," Williams argued, "but Dartrey stands for a Labour Party, pure and simple. You can't govern an Empire by parish council methods."