Brott shook his head.
“I am perfectly well,” he said.
Grahame hesitated.
“It is a delicate thing to mention,” he said. “Perhaps I shall pass even the bounds of our old comradeship. But you have changed. Something is wrong with you. What is it?”
“There is nothing,” Brott answered, looking up. “It is your fancy. I am well enough.”
Grahame’s face was dark with anxiety.
“This is no idle curiosity of mine,” he said. “You know me better than that. But the cause which is nearer my heart than life itself is at stake. Brott, you are the people’s man, their promised redeemer. Think of them, the toilers, the oppressed, God’s children, groaning under the iniquitous laws of generations of evil statesmanship. It is the dawn of their new day, their faces are turned to you. Man, can’t you hear them crying? You can’t fail them. You mustn’t. I don’t know what is the matter with you, Brott, but away with it. Free yourself, man.”
Brott sighed wearily, but already there was a change in him. His face was hardening—the lines in his face deepened. Grahame continued hastily—eagerly.
“Public men,” he said, “are always at the mercy of the halfpenny press, but you know, Brott, your appearance so often in Society lately has set men’s tongues wagging. There is no harm done, but it is time to stop them. You are right to want to understand these people. You must go down amongst them. It has been slumming in Mayfair for you, I know. But have done with it now. It is these people we are going to fight. Let it be open war. Let them hear your programme at Glasgow. We don’t want another French Revolution, but it is going to be war against the drones, fierce, merciless war! You must break with them, Brott, once and for ever. And the time is now.”
Brott held out his hand across the table. No one but this one man could have read the struggle in his face.