"Well--so you have just come back from Paris?" she said indifferently. "Yes; I stayed a day or two after my mother. One didn't want to come back to this dull hole." "Did you see the new piece at the Francais?" He made a face. "Not I! One couldn't be caught by such _vieux jeu_ as that! There was a splendid woman in one of the _cafes chantants_--but I suppose you don't go to _cafes chantants?"_ "No," said Madeleine, eyeing him over her fan with a composure that astonished herself. "No, I don't go to _cafes chantants_." Ancoats looked blank a moment, then resumed, with fervour: "This woman's divine--_epatant_! Then, at the Chat Noir--but--ah! well, perhaps you don't go to the Chat Noir?" "No, I don't go to the Chat Noir." He fidgeted for a minute. She sat silent. Then he said: "There are some new French pictures in the next room. Will you come and see them?" "Thank you, I think I'll stay here," she said coldly. He lingered another second or two, then departed. The girl drew a long breath, then instinctively turned her white neck to see if Naseby had really left her. Strange! he too, from far away, was looking round. In another moment he was making his way slowly back to her. * * * * * "Ah, there's Tressady! Now for news." The remark was Naseby's. He and Lady Madeleine were, as it happened, inspecting the very French pictures that the girl had just refused to look at in Ancoats's company. But now they hurried back to the main drawing-room where the Tressadys were already surrounded by an eager crowd. "Eighteen majority," Tressady was saying. "The Socialists saved it at the last moment, after growling and threatening till nobody knew what was going to happen. Forty Ministerialists walked out, twenty more, at least, were away unpaired, and the Old Liberals voted against the Government to a man." "Oh! they'll go--they'll go on the next clause," said an elderly peer, whose ruddy face glowed with delight. "Serve them right, too! Maxwell's whole aim is revolution made easy. The most dangerous man we have had for years! Looks so precious moderate, too, all the time. Tell me how did Slade vote after all?" And Tressady found himself buttonholed by one person after another; pressed for the events and incidents of the evening: how this person had voted, how that; how Ministers had taken it; whether, after this Pyrrhic victory there was any chance of the Bill's withdrawal, or at least of some radical modification in the coming clauses. Almost everyone in the crowded room belonged, directly or indirectly, to the governing political class. Barely three people among them could have given a coherent account of the Bill itself. But to their fathers and brothers and cousins would belong the passing or the destroying of it. And in this country there is no game that amuses so large a number of intelligent people as the political game.