"I don't see what place a man like Miller has in your scheme of things," he observed, a little restlessly. She shrugged her shoulders. "Miller is a limpet," she said. "He has posed as a man of brains for half a generation. His only real cleverness is an unerring but selfish capacity for attaching himself to the right cause. We can't ignore him. He has a following. On the other hand, he does not represent our principles any more than Pitt would if he were still alive." "What will be your position really as regards the two main sections of the Labour Party?" he asked. "We are absorbing the best of them, day by day," she answered quickly. "What is left of either will be merely the scum. The people will come to us. Their discarded leaders can crawl back to obscurity. The people may follow false gods for a very long time, but they have the knack of recognising the truth when it is shown them." "You have the gift of conviction," he said thoughtfully. She shrugged her shoulders. "Our cause speaks, not I," she declared. "Every word I utter is a waste of breath, a task of supererogation. You can't associate with Stephen Dartrey for a month without realising for yourself what our party means and stands for. So--enough. I didn't ask you here to undertake any missionary work. I asked you, as a matter of fact, for my own pleasure. Take another cigarette and pass me one, please. And here's another cushion," she added, throwing it to him. "You look as though you needed it." He settled down more comfortably. He had the pleasant feeling of being completely at his ease. "So far as entertaining you is concerned," he confessed, "I fear I am likely to be a failure. I am beginning to feel like a constant note of interrogation. There is so much I want to know." "Proceed, then. I am resigned," she said with a smile. "About yourself. I just knew of you as the writer of one or two articles in the reviews. Why have I never heard more of you?" "One reason," she confided, "is because I am so painfully young. I haven't had time yet to become a wonderful woman. You see, I have the tremendous advantage of not having known the world except from underneath a pigtail, while the war was on. I was able to bring to these new conditions an absolutely unbiassed understanding." "But what was your upbringing?" he asked. "Your father, for instance?" "Is this going to be a pill for you?" she enquired, with slightly wrinkled forehead. "He was professor of English at Dresden University. We were all living there when the war broke out, but he was such a favourite that they let us go to Paris. He died there, the week after peace was declared. My mother still lives at Versailles. She was governess to Lady Clanarton's grandchildren, hence my presence yesterday in those aristocratic circles." "And you live here alone?"