"I seem to have settled down with the Democrats," he told her. "I do my best to keep the party in line. The great trades unions are, of course, our chief difficulty, but I think we are making progress even with them. Some of the miners' representatives dined with me at the Trocadero the other night. Good fellows they are, too. There is only one great difficulty," he went on, "in the consolidation of my party, and that is to get a little more breadth into the views of these men who represent the leading industries. They are obsessed with the duties that they owe to their own artificers and the labour connected with the particular industry they represent. It is hard to make them see the importance of any other subject. Yet we need these very men as lawmakers. I want them to study production and the laws of production from a universal point of view." "I can quite understand," she acquiesced sympathetically, "that you have a difficult class of men to deal with. Tell me what the evening papers mean by their placards?" "We had a small tactical success against the Government this afternoon," he explained. "It doesn't really amount to anything. We are not ready for their resignation at the moment, any more than they are ready to resign." "You are an object of terror to all my people," she confided smilingly. "They say that Horlock dare not go to the country and that you could turn him out to-morrow if you cared to." "So much for politics," he remarked drily. "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.