Tallente made a grimace.
"Have you sworn to abjure me and all my works?"
"So much so," she told him, "that I have been here waiting for you for at least half an hour and I have put on the gown you said you liked best. Some one said in a book I was reading last week that affection was proved only by trifles. I have certainly never before in my life altered my scheme of clothes to please any man."
He raised her fingers to his lips.
"You are exercising," he said, "the most wonderful gift of your sex.
You are providing an oasis—more than that, a paradise—for a
disheartened toiler. It seems that I have enemies whose very existence
I never guessed at."
"Well, does that matter very much?" she asked cheerfully. "It was one of your late party, wasn't it, who said that the making of enemies was the only reward of political success?"
"A cheap enough saying," Tallente sighed, "yet with the germs of truth in it. I don't mind the allusion to a sinister rumour. The air will be thick with them before long. The other—well, it's beneath criticism but it hurts."
She laughed whole-heartedly.
"Andrew," she said, "for the first time in my life I am ashamed of you. Here am I, hidebound in conventions, and I could just summon indignation enough to send the paper down to the kitchen to be burnt. Since then I have not even thought of it. I was far more angry that any one should anticipate the troubles which you have to face. Come and sit down."
She led him to the couch and held his fingers in hers as she leaned back in a corner.