them often towards the light.  Then they began to fear me, or rather my principles.  It was out of my principles, although I was not nominally one of them, that Dartrey admits freely to-day he built up the Democratic Party.  He had been working on the same lines for years, a little too much from the idealistic point of view.  He needed the formula.  I gave it to him.  Horlock came into office again and I worked with him for a time.  Gradually, however, my position became more and more difficult.  In the end he offered me a post in the Cabinet, induced me to resign my own seat, which I admit was a doubtful one, and sent me to fight Hellesfield, which it was never intended that I should win.  Then Miller dug his own grave.  He opposed me there and I lost the seat.  Horlock was politely regretful, scarcely saw what could be done for me at the moment, was disposed to join in a paltry little domestic plot to send me to the Lords.  This was at the time I came down to Martinhoe, the time, except for those brief moments in Paris, when I first met you.”

“Pruning roses in a shockingly bad suit of clothes,” she murmured.

“And taken for my own gardener!  Well, then came Dartrey’s visit.  He laid his programme before me, offered me a seat and I agreed to lead the Democrats in the House.  There I think I have been useful.  I knew the game, which Dartrey didn’t.  Whilst he has achieved almost the impossible, has, except so far as regards Miller’s influence amongst the trades unions, brought the great army of the people into line, I accomplished the smaller task of giving them their due weight in the House.”

“Very well, then,” Jane declared, looking at him with glowing eyes, “there is your stocktaking, taken from your own, the most modest point of view.  With your own lips you confess to what you have achieved, to where you stand.  What doubts should any sane man have?  How can you say that the lamp of your life has burned dull?”

“Insight,” he answered promptly.  “Don’t think that I fear the big fight.  I don’t.  With Dartrey on my side we shall wipe Miller into oblivion.  It isn’t true to-day to say that he represents the trades unions, for the very reason that the trades unions as solid bodies don’t exist any longer.  The men have learnt to think for themselves.  Many of them are earnest members of the Democratic Party.  They have learnt to look outside the interests of the little trade in which they earn their weekly wage.  No, it isn’t Miller that I am afraid of.”

“Then what is it?” she demanded.

“How can I put it?” he went on thoughtfully.  “Well, first of all, then, I feel that the Democrats, when they come into power, are going to develop as swiftly as may be all the fevers, the sore places, the jealousies and the pettiness of every other political party which has ever tried to rule the State.  I see the symptoms already and that is what I think makes my heart grow faint.  I have given the best years of my life to toiling for others.  Who believes it?  Who is grateful?  Who would not say that because I lead a great party in the House of Commons, I have all that I have worked for, that my reward is at hand?  And it isn’t.  If I am Prime Minister in three months’ time, there will still be something left of the feeling of weariness I carry with me to-day.”