“So much for politics,” she assented.  “And now about yourself?”

“A little finger of flame burning in an empty place,” he sighed.  “That is how life seems to me when I take my hand off the plough.”

She answered him lightly, but her face softened and her eyes shone with sympathy.

“Aren’t you by way of being just a little sentimental?”

“Perhaps,” he admitted.  “If I am, let me feel the luxury of it.”

“One reads different things of you.”

“For instance?”

“Town Topics says that you have become an interesting figure at many social functions.  You must meet attractive people there.”

“I only wish that I could find them so,” he answered.  “London has been almost feverishly gay lately and every one seems to have discovered a vogue for entertaining politicians.  There seems to be a sort of idea that dangerous corners may be rubbed off us by a judicious application of turtle soup and champagne.”

“Cynic!” she scoffed pleasantly.

“Well, I don’t know,” he went on.  “From any other point of view, some of the entertainments to which I have been bidden appear utterly without meaning.  However, it is part of my programme to prove to the world that we Democrats can open our arms wide enough to include every class in life.  Therefore, I go to many places I should otherwise avoid.  I have studied the attitude of the younger women whom I have approached, purely impersonally and without the slightest hypersensitiveness.  They have all been perfectly pleasant, perfectly disposed for conversation or any of the usual social amenities.  But they know that I have in the background a wife.  To flirt with a married man of fifty isn’t worth while.”

“It appears to me,” she said, with a slight note of severity in her tone, “that you have set your mind upon having a perfectly frivolous time.”

“Not at all,” he objected.  “I have simply been experimenting.”

The service of dinner had now commenced, and with George in the background, a haughty head waiter a few yards off, and a myrmidon handing them their dishes with a beatific smile, the conversation drifted naturally into generalities.  When they resumed their more intimate talk, Tallente felt himself inspired by an ever-increasing admiration for his companion and her adaptability.  During this brief interval he had seen many admiring and some wondering glances directed towards Jane and he realised that she was somehow a person entirely apart from any of the others, more beautiful, more distinguished, more desirable.  Of the Lady Jane ruling at Woolhanger with a high hand, there was no trace.  She looked out upon the gay room with its voluptuous air, its many couples and little parties carrees, with the friendly and sympathetic interest of one who finds herself in agreeable surroundings and whose only desire is to come into touch with them.  Her plain black gown, her simple hat with its single quill, the pearls which were her sole adornment, all seemed part of her.  She appeared wholly unconscious of the admiration she excited.  She who was sometimes inclined, perhaps, to carry herself a little haughtily in her mother’s drawing-room, was here only anxious to share in the genial atmosphere of friendliness which the general tone of her surroundings seemed to demand.