"Not in the least," Falkenberg objected. "You know the position as well as I. The political party of which you are a member is in power for a long time. You have got hold of the middle class, you've bought the Irish vote, you've bought labor. In the ranks of your party there isn't a man whom I fear—only you. I will not have you go back."
"But as it happens," Julien announced, "I am going back. I have heard from England this evening. Your friend Carraby is resigning."
Falkenberg shook his head. He remained calm, but there was an ominous flash in his eyes.
"You would make a mistake," he asserted. "No one ever goes back—successfully. Do I not know—I who am twenty years your senior, I who have felt my way into all the corners and crevices of life? Listen to me, please."
He drew a chair towards them and sat down, crossing his knees and looking towards them both in friendly fashion.
"Sir Julien," he said, "and you, my dear young lady, your entire future depends upon this little conversation. Can you not put it out of your minds for a few moments that I am the dangerous Falkenberg, the mischief-maker, the ogre of all respectable Britons? Can you not remember only that I am a well-meaning, not unkindly old gentleman who has some good advice to offer? You at least will listen to me, Lady Anne. Do I look like an assassin by choice? Do I seem like the sort of person to indulge in these dangerous exercises for mere amusement? You are both young, you have both your lives before you. Why do you, Sir Julien, voluntarily put the yoke about your neck? Why do you, my gracious young lady, suffer the man with whom your life is to be linked to deliver himself over voluntarily into a state of bondage? Politics lose all glamor to those who have dwelt within the walls. Sir Julien has dwelt there and so have I. He knows in his heart whether it is worth while. One lives always amidst a clamor of evil tongues, a pestilent trail of poisonous suspicions. One gives up one's life to be flouted and misunderstood, to be accused of evil motives and every imaginable crime. When it is all over, when one has time to think of all that one has missed, one feels that all one has done could have been done just as well by the next man in the street. That is the end of it. And against all that, you two have the world before you. You can be rich—very rich indeed. You can make an idyll of this love of yours. You can travel around the world in your own yacht, you can visit all strange countries, you can wander where you will, and all the time affairs in the world will go on very much the same as if you had stayed and given the best hours of your life to the dusty treadmill. I am an old man, Lady Anne, and I have an evil name in your country. They call me greedy, subtle, and ambitious. I may be all these things, but let me assure you that if I had my time over again my master could find another servant and my country another toiler. There are fairer flowers in life to be plucked than any which can be reached from the high places in Downing Street or Berlin…. Let me, at least, Lady Anne, make sure of your support? Mind, I am not threatening now—I plead."
Lady Anne looked at him gravely.
"Sir Julien," she declared, "will answer you for himself."
"But I want your own decision," Falkenberg insisted. "I want you to see the truth as I see it. I want you to tell me that you agree with me."
She shook her head.