“I don't quite understand,” said Clytie, to whom these details were all new. She was vaguely aware that Thornton had intentions of aiming at a parliamentary career, but as he had volunteered no confidences, she had shrunk from soliciting them.
“I don't understand,” she repeated, “why you should take a private-secretaryship. You want to enter Parliament.”
“Of course. But I am so out of things that I want to get into training, so to speak. I shall be this session, perhaps next, with Hernshawe and learn all the ropes, and then he will run me for a suitable vacancy. It is as simple as good-morning, as they say in this country. I must do something, and politics seem about the only mildly exciting thing to go in for in this severely flat and respectable continent. But beyond looking after the society side of the matter, I don't see why you need worry your pretty head about it.”
“Then don't you want me to become a bit of a politician, so as to help you, and understand you in your career?”
“Oh, of course, to a certain extent,” he replied with cheerful offhandedness. “But for God's sake, my dear child, don't become a political woman. If there's one kind of a woman I bar more than another, its the female politician. Of course you'll have to go round canvassing for votes at the election, and to humbug people in society, but all that is rather sport than otherwise? Never mind, little wife; you'll have a ripping good time in London when the show begins.”
He laughed, in gay good humour again. Clytie echoed with a faint smile.
“Thornton,” she said after a short pause, “I don't want to bother you about politics if you don't like it”—she felt now a strange hesitation in speaking to him—“but you know you'll have to convert me, dear. It has been on my mind for some time. You are a Tory, you know, and I have been a Radical hitherto in feelings and sympathies.”
He burst out laughing at her little air of seriousness. Perhaps if he had known how he hurt her, he would not have treated the matter so cavalierly. This difference in political views had been a question of some concern to Clytie, who was aware of old-fashioned Tory prejudices. And Thornton took her Radicalism as a jest, attributing no importance to the difference of opinion.
“You'll change when we get back and become a shining light in the Primrose League.”
She was too depressed by the whole of the foregoing conversation to pursue the subject any further. Thornton started the lighter topic of personal criticism of their new acquaintances in Paris, and rattled on in great spirits. He had forgotten entirely the argument that Clytie's somewhat unconventional action had occasioned, and was as boyishly gay as ever. But men forget things much more easily than women, especially when they have no object in remembering, nor any reminiscent twinge of susceptibility.