man of sawdust and red tape."

"Am I as bad as all that?" he asked quietly.

She fingered her pearls for a moment.

"Perhaps I haven't the right to complain," she acknowledged. "I have
gone my own way always. But if one is permitted to look for a moment
into the past, can you tell me a single hour when work was not the
prominent thought in your brain, the idol before which you worshipped?
Why, even our honeymoon was spent canvassing!"

"The election was an unexpected one," he reminded her.

"It would have been the same thing," she declared. "The only literature
which you really understand is a Blue Book, and the only music you hear
is the chiming of Big Ben."

"You speak," he remarked, "as though you resented these things. Yet you
knew before you married me that I had ambitions, that I did not propose
to lead an idle life."

"Oh, yes, I knew!" she assented drily. "But we are wandering from the
point. I am still wondering what has brought you here. Have you come
direct from England?"

He shook his head.

"I came to-day from Bordighera."

"More and more mysterious," she murmured. "Bordighera, indeed! I thought
you once told me that you hated the Riviera."

"So I do," he agreed.

"And yet you are here?"

"Yet I am here."

"And you have not come to look after me," she went on, "and the mystery
of the little brown man who watches me is still unexplained."

"I know nothing about that person," he asserted, "and I had no idea that
you were here."

"Or you would not have come?" she challenged him.

"Your presence," he retorted, nettled into forgetting himself for a
moment, "would not have altered my plans in the slightest."

"Then you have a reason for coming!" she exclaimed quickly.

He gave no sign of annoyance but his lips were firmly closed. She
watched him steadfastly.

"I wonder at myself no longer," she continued. "I do not think that any
woman in the world could ever live with a man to whom secrecy is as
great a necessity as the very air he breathes. No wonder, my dear Henry,
the politicians speak so well of you, and so confidently of your
brilliant future!"

"I am not aware," he observed calmly, "that I have ever been unduly
secretive so far as you are concerned. During the last few months,
however, of our life together, you must remember that you chose to
receive on terms of friendship a person whom I regard--"

Her eyes suddenly flashed him a warning. He dropped his voice almost to
a whi