'Have you been there long?' he asked instead.
'Half a year.'
As he kept silence, Emily continued with a question, the first she had put.
'What have you chosen for your life's work?'
Wilfrid could not overcome the tendency of blood to his cheeks. He was more than half ashamed to tell her the truth.
'You will laugh at me,' he said. 'I am in Parliament.'
'You are? I never see newspapers.'
She added it as if to excuse herself for not being aware of his public activity.
'Oh, I am still far from being a subject of leading-articles,' Wilfrid exclaimed. 'Indeed, I gave you no answer to your question. My life's work is non-existent. All my old plans have come to nothing, and I have formed no new ones, no serious plans. My life will be a failure, I suppose.'
'But you aim at success in politics?'