natural
pleasure.

"How good of you!" she murmured. "I scarcely hoped that you would come.
You have been with Maxendorf?"

He nodded.

"Is it a confession?" he asked. "It was Mr. Foley's first question to
me."

"It is because we hate and distrust the man," she replied. "You aren't
a politician, you see, Mr. Maraton. You don't quite appreciate some of
the forces which are making an old man of my uncle to-day, which make
life almost intolerable for many of us when we think seriously," she
went on simply.

"Aren't you exaggerating that sentiment just a little?" he suggested.

"Not a particle," she assured him. "However, you came here to be
entertained, didn't you? I won't croak to you any more. I think I have
done my duty for this evening. Let us find a corner and talk like
ordinary human beings. Are you going in to supper?"

"I hadn't thought of it," he admitted.

"I dined at seven o'clock," she told him. "We seem to have provided
supper for hundreds of people, and I am sure not half of them are
coming."

They passed through two of the rooms into a long, low apartment which
led into the winter gardens. At one end refreshments were being served,
and the rest of the space was taken up with little tables. Elisabeth
led him to one placed just inside the winter garden. A footman filled
their glasses with champagne.

"Now we are going to be normal human beings," she declared. "How much I
wish that you really were a normal human being!"

"In what respect am I different?"

"You know quite well," she answered. "I should like you to be what you
seem to be--just a capable, clever, rising politician, with a place in
the Cabinet before you, working for your country, sincere, free from all
these strange notions."

"Working for my country," he repeated. "That is just the difficult part
of the whole situation, nowadays. I know that I am rather a trouble to
your uncle. Sometimes I fear that I may become even a greater trouble.
It is so hard to adopt the attitude which you suggest when one feels the
intolerable situation which exists in that country."

"But we are on the highroad now to great reforms," she reminded him.
"Another decade of years, and the people whom you worship will surely be
lifting their heads."

He smiled as she looked across at him with a puzzled air.

"It is strange," she remarked, "that you, too, have the appearance of a
man dissatisfied with himself. I wonder why? Surely you must feel that
eve