"After hours," she reassured him. "Susan and I are going to talk a little nonsense after the day's work. You may join in if you can unbend so far. We shall probably eat more than is good for us--I had a cup of coffee for lunch--and if you decide to be magnificent and offer us wine, we shall drink it and talk more nonsense than ever." He called for the wine list. "I thought we were going to discuss the effect of Grecian philosophy upon the Roman system of government." She shook her head. "You're a long way out," she declared, "Our conversation will skirt the edges of many subjects. We shall speak of the Russian Ballet, Susan and I will exchange a few whispered confidences about our admirers, we shall discuss even one who comes in and goes out, with subtle references to their clothes and morals, and when you and I are left alone we may even indulge in the wholesome, sentimental exercise of a little flirtation." "There you have me," he confessed. "I know a little about everything else you have mentioned." "A very good opening." she approved. "Keep it till Susan has gone and then propose yourself as a disciple. There is only one drawback about this place," she went on, nodding curtly across the room to Miller. "So many of our own people come here. Mr. Miller must be pleased to see us together." "Why?" Tallente asked. "Is he an admirer?" Nora's face was almost ludicrously expressive. "He would like to he," she admitted, "but, thick-skinned though he is, I have managed to make him understand pretty well how I feel about him. You'll find him a thorn in your side," she went on reflectively. "You see, if our party has a fault, it is in a certain lack of system. We have only a titular chief and no real leader. Miller thinks that post is his by predestination. Your coming is beginning to worry him already. It was entirely on your account he paid me that visit this afternoon." "To be perfectly frank with you," Tallente sighed, "I should find Miller a loathsome coadjutor." "There are drawbacks to everything in life," Nora replied. "Long before Miller has become anything except a nuisance to you, you will have realised that the only political party worth considering, during the next fifty years, at any rate, will be the Democrats. After that, I shouldn't be at all surprised if the aristocrats didn't engineer a revolution, especially if we disenfranchise them.--Susan, you have a new hat on. Tell me at once with whom you are going to Daly's?" "No one who counts," the girl declared, with a little grimace. "I am going with my brother and a very sober married friend of his." "After working hours," Nora confessed, glancing critically at the sole which had just been tendered for Tallente's examination, "the chief interest of Susan and myself, as you may have observed, lies in food and in your sex. I think we must have what some nasty German woman once called the man-hunger."