"You are assured of that?"
"Absolutely sure! I have educated her. I have freed her from superstitions and conventionalities. To her, as to me, the lies we shall have to tell will be burdensome in the extreme; but we shall both forget in time."
"That is exactly what you can never do!" said Glazzard, deliberately. "You enter upon a lifetime of dissimulation. Ten, twenty years hence you will have to act as careful a part as on the day when you and she first present yourselves in Polterham."
"Oh, in a sense!" cried the other, impatiently.
"A very grave sense.—Quarrier, why have you taken up this political idea? What's the good of it?"
He leaned forward and spoke with a low earnest voice. Denzil could not instantly reply.
"Give it up!" pursued Glazzard. "Take Lilian abroad, and live a life of quiet happiness. Go on with your literary work"——
"Nonsense! I can't draw back now, and I don't wish to."
"Would you—if—if I were willing to become the Liberal candidate?"
Denzil stared in astonishment.