She struck a match and lit the lamp. She would have pulled down the blind, but he checked her.

"No," he objected, "let us stand and look down together upon this wilderness. So!"

They were high up and they looked upon a treeless waste--rows of houses, tall factories, the line of the river beyond, the murky glow westwards.

"Here I can talk to you," he said. "Here it is silent. Soon I go back to my life and my life's work. You, Julia, must go with me."

She drew a little away from him, speechless with a queer sort of surprise, and a little indignant. He held her wrist firmly.

"I am a man who has written much of love," he continued, "of love and life and all the tangled skein of emotions which make of it a complex thing. And yet so few of us know what love is, so few of us know what companionship is, so few of us know the world in which those others dwell. You have looked at me with your great eyes, Julia, and at first you saw nothing but a fat, plain old man, with plenty of conceit and a humour for idle speeches. And today you think a little differently, and as the days go on you will think more differently still, for I am going to take you with me, Julia, and I am going to keep you with me, and I am going to keep the light in your eyes and the laughter at your lips, in the only way that counts. You will sit with me in my study, you shall see my work come and hear it grow. I shall take you into the world where the music is born, and your eyes will be closed there, and you will only know that there is another soul there who is your guide, and in whom you trust, and for whom you have a strange feeling. That is how love comes, Julia--the only sort of love which lasts. It isn't born in this land, it doesn't even flourish in this universe. If you don't come up in the clouds to find it, it isn't the sort that lasts. You are going to find it with me, dear."

She had begun to tremble a little, the tears were in her eyes.

"Oh, I know!" he faltered, with a break in his own voice. "But you'll leave your sorrows behind in my world."

It was midnight when Maraton left the House. He came out with Mr.

Foley, and they stood for a moment at the entrance. An electric coupe rolled swiftly up.

"You must come home with me for a minute or two, Maraton," Mr. Foley urged. "It is on your way."

The coupe, however, was already occupied. Elisabeth leaned out of the window. She held the door open.

"I am going to take Mr. Maraton back with me," she insisted. "The car is there for you, uncle."

Mr. Foley smiled.

"Quite right," he a.s.sented. "Get in, Maraton. I shall be home before you."

Maraton obeyed, and they glided out of the Palace yard.

"I was there all the time," Elisabeth told him quietly. "I heard everything. I was so glad, so proud. Even your Labour Members had to come and shake hands with you."

"I don't think Mr. Dale liked it," he remarked, smiling. "They are not bad fellows at heart, but they've got the poison in their systems which seems, somehow or other, to become part of the equipment of the politician--self-interest, over-egotism, contraction of interest. It makes one almost afraid."

She leaned a little towards him.

"You will not fear anything," she whispered confidently. "To-night, as I looked down, it seemed to me that as a looker-on I saw more, perhaps, of the real significance of it all than you who were there. It is a new force, you know, which has come into politics, a new Party. I suppose historians will call to-night, the fusion of Parties which is going to happen, an extraordinary triumph for Mr. Foley. Perhaps he deserves it--in my heart I believe that he does--but not in the way they would try to make out."

"His heart is right," Maraton declared. "He has wide sympathies and splendid understanding."

"It is a new chapter which begins to-night," she repeated. "You will have many disappointments to face, both of you."

"But isn't it a glorious fight!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "A great cause at one's back, a future filled with magnificent possibilities! Lady Elisabeth," he went on, "you can't imagine what this hour means. Sometimes I have had moments of horrible depression.

It is so easy to feel the sorrows of the people in one's heart, so easy to stir them into a pa.s.sionate apprehension of their position. And then comes the dull, sickening doubt whether, after all, it had not been better to leave them as they were. Of what use are words--that is what I have felt so often. And now there has come the power to do great things for them. Life couldn't hold anything more splendid."

Her hand touched his. She had withdrawn her glove.

"You will let me help?" she begged.

He turned towards her then, and she saw the light in his face for which she had longed. With a little cry her head sank upon his shoulder, and his arms closed around her.

"I am almost jealous of the people," she murmured. "Only I want you to teach me to love them and feel for them as you do. I want to feel that the same thing in our lives is bringing us always closer together."

THE END