"Probably." His reply was lukewarm.
"And isn't there news of the convention? You ought to know, who get straight from the wires what ordinary mortals must wait to read. Has he won?"
"There was nothing definite when I left the office. They hadn't begun to ballot."
Mrs. Hilliard sensed an increasing dryness in the editor's manner.
"We're not talking literature, are we?" she laughed.
Bernard Graves considered the moment ripe for a paradox.
"The by-laws of the ideal literary club would forbid all literary talk," he declared. "Then there would be nothing else."
"Cynic," rebuked the lady, threatening punishment with her fan. "We shall talk politics if we choose."
Disseminating culture and an odor of patchouli she drifted down the drawing-room to join another group, and the two men caught a fragment of feminine comment from a divan hard by.
"Cora Hilliard is handsome," asserted a voice. "Look at those shoulders."