"It's your worst place in the constituency, and I'm not sure of your reception. Oh, but yes, I am," she added hastily. "You always win good feeling. No one really hates you. You're on the way to big success."
"I've had some unexpected luck. I've got Tarboe on my side. He's a member of Barouche's party, but he's coming with me."
"Did he tell you so?" she asked with apparent interest.
"I've had a letter from him, and in it he says he is with me 'to the knife!' That's good. Tarboe has a big hold on rivermen, and he may carry with him some of the opposition. It was a good letter—if puzzling."
"How, puzzling?"
"He said in one part of it: 'When you come back here to play your part you'll make it a success, the whole blessed thing.' I've no idea what he meant by that. I don't think he wants me as a partner, and I'll give him no chance of it. I don't want now what I could have had when Fabian left. That's all over, Junia."
"He meant something by it; he's a very able man," she replied gravely.
"He's a huge success."
"And women love success more than all else," he remarked a little cynically.
"You're unjust, Carnac. Of course, women love success; but they'd not sell their souls for it—not the real women—and you ought to know it."
"I ought to know it, I suppose," he answered, and he held her eyes meaningly. He was about to say something vital, but Fabian and his wife came.