“You are tired,” she cried at last. “It is thoughtless of me to keep you out of your bed. You have had a weary night, I am sure. Was it the Irish again, or the horrid teetotalers?” “It was both, my dear,” said he. “Phyllis,” he added solemnly, “an Irish teetotaler is a fearful thing.” “You shall forget all the intemperate teetotalers in a beautiful sleep,” said she, putting her arms around his neck. “Good-night, papa! It was so thoughtless of me to keep you up. It is one o’clock.” “It appears to me that you are the one who should be ready to succumb,” said her father. “I had nothing to stimulate my imagination. Practical politics has not yet discovered a good working reply to the man who calls his fellow-man a liar, so the political outlook is not very cheering.” “That is what is greatly needed: a satisfactory retort--verbal, of course--to that every-day assertion.” “It has become the most potent influence in the House of Commons, during the past year or two; and the worst of the matter is that the statement is nearly always correct.” “Then there is all the greater need for a _modus vivendi_”--she had an ample acquaintance with the jargon of diplomacy. “I don’t despair of Parliament being able to suggest an efficient retort.” “Parliament: two ragamuffins quarreling up an entry over a rotten orange. Good-night, my child!” She was at last in her own room: an apartment of gracious-tinted fabrics and pink satin panels; of tapestried sofas made by French artists before the lovely daughter of Maria Teresa went to her death. She switched on the lights in the candle sconces, and threw herself down upon one of the sofas. Her theater wrap and fan she had laid over a chair. It was not to the drama which she had seen superbly acted at the Parthenon that her thoughts went out; but to the words which her dearest friend had spoken when driving back from the theater. What words were they?