“What you see before you,” she went on, “is an oyster stew.  The true hostess, you see, studying her guest’s special tastes.  It is very nearly cooked and if you do not pronounce it the most delicious thing you ever ate in your life, I shall be terribly disappointed.”

Dartrey sat as still as a man upon whom some narcotic influence rested, and his words sounded almost unnatural.

“I am convinced,” he assured her, “that I shall be able to gratify you.”

“What you get afterwards you see upon the sideboard:  cold partridges—­both young birds though—­ham, salad of my own mixing, and, behold! my one outburst of extravagance—­strawberries.  There is also a camembert cheese lying in ambush outside because of its strength.  I would suggest that during the three minutes which will ensue before I serve you with the stew, you open the champagne.  You are so dumbfounded at my audacity that perhaps a little exercise will be good for you.”

Dartrey rose to his feet, produced the corkscrew and found the cork amenable.  He filled Nora’s glass and his own.  Then he leaned over her and took her hand for a moment.  His face was full of kindness and he was curiously disturbed.

“You are the dearest child on earth, Nora,” he said.  “I find myself wishing from the bottom of my heart that it were possible that you could be—­something nearer and dearer to me.”

She looked feverishly into his face and pushed him away.

“Go and sit down and don’t be absurd,” she enjoined.  “Try and forget everything else except that you are going to eat an oyster stew.  That is really the way to take life, isn’t it—­in cycles—­and it doesn’t matter then whether one’s happy times are bounded by the coming night or the coming years.  For five minutes, then, a paradise—­of oyster stew.”

“It is distinctly the best oyster stew I have ever tasted in my life,” he pronounced a few minutes later.

“It is very good indeed,” she assented.  “Now your turn comes.  Go to the sideboard and bring me something.  Remember that I am hungry and don’t forget the salad.  And tell me, incidentally, whether you have heard anything of a rumour going around about Andrew Tallente?”

He served her and himself and resumed his seat.

“A rumour?” he repeated.  “No, I have heard nothing.  What sort of a rumour?”

“A vague but rather persistent one,” she replied.  “They say that it is in the power of certain people—­to drive him out of political life at any moment.”

Dartrey’s smile was sufficiently contemptuous but there was a note of anxiety in his tone which he could not altogether conceal.

“These canards are very absurd, Nora,” he declared.  “The politician is the natural quarry of the blackmailer, but I should think no man of my acquaintance has lived a more blameless life than Andrew Tallente.”

“I will tell you in what form the story came to me,” she said.  “It was from a journalist on the staff of one of our great London dailies.  The rumour was that they had been indirectly approached to know if they would pay a large sum for a story, perfectly printable, but which would drive Tallente out of political life.”