"Look here, Fontenoy! I cannot look at the matter as you do, and we may as well understand each other. To me, this election of mine is, after all, an ordinary affair. I take it, and what is to come after it, just as other men do. I have accepted your party and your programme, and I mean to stick to them. I see that the political situation is difficult and exciting, and I don't intend to shirk. But I am no more going to slay my private life and interests at the altar of politics than my father did when he was in Parliament. If the revolution is coming, it will come in spite of you and me. And, moreover--if you will let me say so--I am convinced that your modes of procedure are not even profitable to the cause in the long run. No man can work as you do, without rest and without distraction. You will break down, and then, where will the 'cause' be?" Lord Fontenoy surveyed the speaker with a curious, calculating look. It was as though, with as much rapidity as his mind was capable of, he balanced a number of pros and cons against each other, and finally decided to let the matter drop, perhaps not without some regret for having raised it. "Ah! well," he said, "I have no doubt that what I have said appears to you mere meddlesomeness. If so, you will change your view, and you will forgive me. I must trust the compulsion of the situation. You will realise it, as I have done, when you get well into the fight. There is something in this Labour tyranny which rouses all a man's passions, bad and good. If it does not rouse yours, I have been much mistaken in my estimate of you. As for me, don't waste your concern. There are few stronger men than I. You forget, too--" There was a pause. Of late years, since his transformation in fact, Lord Fontenoy's stiff reserve about himself had been rarely broken through. At this moment, however, George, looking up, saw that his companion was in some way moved by a kind of sombre and personal emotion. "You forget," the speaker resumed, "that I learnt nothing either at school or college, and that a man who wants to lead a party must, some time or other, pay for that precious privilege. When you left England, the only financial statement I could understand was a betting-book. I knew no history except what one gets from living among people who have been making it, and even that I was too lazy to profit by. I couldn't understand the simplest economical argument, and I _hated_ trouble of all kinds. Nothing but the toil of a galley-slave could have enabled me to do what I have done. You would be astonished sometimes if you could look in upon me at night and see what I am doing--what I am obliged to do to keep up the most elementary appearances." George was touched. The tone of the speaker had passed suddenly into one of plain dignity, in spite of, perhaps because of, the half-bitter humility that mingled with it.