em to go,
even the things one has planned to say. I suppose--I treated
you--disgustingly."

I protested.

"Yes," she said. "I treated you as I did--and I thought you would stand
it. I _knew_, I knew then as well as you do now that male to my female
you wouldn't stand it, but somehow--I thought there were other things.
Things that could override that...."

"Not," I said, "for a boy of one-and-twenty."

"But in a man of twenty-six?"

I weighed the question. "Things are different," I said, and then, "Yes.
Anyhow now--if I may come back penitent,--to a friendship."

We looked at one another gravely. Faintly in our ears sounded the music
of past and distant things. We pretended to hear nothing of that, tried
honestly to hear nothing of it. I had not remembered how steadfast and
quiet her face could be. "Yes," she said, "a friendship."

"I've always had you in my mind, Stephen," she said. "When I saw I
couldn't marry you, it seemed to me I had better marry and be free of
any further hope. I thought we could get over that. 'Let's get it over,'
I thought. Now--at any rate--we have got over that." Her eyes verified
her words a little doubtfully. "And we can talk and you can tell me of
your life, and the things you want to do that make life worth living.
Oh! life has been _stupid_ without you, Stephen, large and expensive and
aimless....Tell me of your politics. They say--Justin told me--you think
of parliament?"

"I want to do that. I have been thinking---- In fact I am going to
stand." I found myself hesitating on the verge of phrases in the quality
of a review article. It was too unreal for her presence. And yet it was
this she seemed to want from me. "This," I said, "is a phase of great
opportunities. The war has stirred the Empire to a sense of itself, to a
sense of what it might be. Of course this Tariff Reform row is a squalid
nuisance; it may kill out all the fine spirit again before anything is
done. Everything will become a haggle, a chaffering of figures.... All
the more reason why we should try and save things from the commercial
traveller. If the Empire is anything at all, it is something infinitely
more than a combination in restraint of trade...."

"Yes," she said. "And you want to take that line. The high line."

"If one does not take the high line," I said, "what does one go into
politics for?"

"Stephen," she smiled, "you haven't lost a sort of simplicity---- People
go into politics because it look