"Not the political clubs—see here, is there any real advance when the knife goes deep enough? Suppose a thousand English women were butchered in China—or I'll make it Turkey—would your father be for the I.A.L.? If he were, the people would burn his pulpit!"
"It only means that we must educate."
"We're doing it all the time. Does education make your burglar sing psalms, or does it teach him to use oxygen for burning open the safe? I think nothing of education—that way. Who are the best educated people in Europe? The Germans. Are they coming in to the I.A.L.?"
"My father hopes that much may be done by the understanding between the ministers——"
He laughed rudely, brutally.
"All the sheep baaing together, and the wolf sharpening his teeth on the national grindstone. I've no patience to hear it."
"Then I certainly will not repeat it."
A flush of anger coloured her cheeks, and her heart began to beat fast. She was conscious of a rôle which fitted her but ill, and was no reflection of herself. How much sooner would she have been downstairs among the well-dressed women who were beginning to flock into the restaurant for lunch! This man's brutal logic threatened to shatter her professed ideals, and to leave her vanity defenceless. She remembered at the same time what the meaning of the triumph would be if she won him. All the country would talk of that!
"You are not offended with me?" he said in a gentler tone. "I'm sure you won't be when you get back home and think of it."
"I shall try to think of it as little as possible."