"So you were carried away?"
She looked at him with a curious, sudden gravity—a touch of defiance.
"No!—neither by him, nor by you. I don't believe in your Bill—and I am sure you will never carry it!"
Wharton lifted his eyebrows.
"Perhaps you'll tell me where you are," he said, "that I may know how to talk? When we last discussed these things at Mellor, I think—you were a Socialist?"
"What does it matter what I was last year?" she asked him gaily, yet with a final inflection of the voice which was not gay; "I was a baby! Now perhaps I have earned a few poor, little opinions—but they are a ragged bundle—and I have never any time to sort them."
"Have you left the Venturists?"
"No!—but I am full of perplexities; and the Cravens, I see, will soon be for turning me out. You understand—I know some working folk now!"
"So you did last year."
"No!"—she insisted, shaking her head—"that was all different. But now I am in their world—I live with them—and they talk to me. One evening in the week I am 'at home' for all the people I know in our Buildings—men and women. Mrs. Hurd—you know who I mean?"—her brow contracted a moment—"she comes with her sewing to keep me company; so does Edith Craven; and sometimes the little room is packed. The men smoke—when we can have the windows open!—and I believe I shall soon smoke too—it makes them talk better. We get all sorts—Socialists, Conservatives, Radicals—"