In truth, Tressady was not particularly flattered by Ancoats's fancy for him. He did not care enough about the lad in return. Yet, in response to one or two outbreaks of talk on Ancoats's part--talks full of a stagey railing at convention--he had tried, for the mother's sake, to lecture the boy a little--to get in a word or two that might strike home. But Ancoats had merely stared a moment out of his greenish eyes, had shaken his queer mane of hair, as an animal shakes off the hand that curbs it, had changed the subject at once, and departed. Tressady had seen very little of him since. And had not, in truth, taken it to heart. He had neither time nor mind to think about Ancoats. Now, as he walked home to dinner, he put the subject from him impatiently. His own moral predicament absorbed him--this weird, silent way in which the whole political scene was changing in aspect and composition under his eyes, was grouping itself for him round one figure--one face. Had he any beliefs left about the Bill itself? He hardly knew. In truth it was not his reason that was leading him. It now was little more than a passionate boyish longing to wrench himself free from this odious task of hurting and defeating Marcella Maxwell. The long process of political argument was perhaps tending every day to the loosening and detaching of those easy convictions of a young Chauvinism, that had drawn him originally to Fontenoy's side. Intellectually he was all adrift. At the same time he confessed to himself, with perfect frankness, that he could and would have served Fontenoy happily enough, but for another influence--another voice. Yet his old loyalty to Fontenoy tugged sorely at his will. And with this loyalty of course was bound up the whole question of his own personal honour and fidelity--his pledges to his constituents and his party. Was there no rational and legitimate way out? He pondered the political situation as he walked along with great coolness and precision. When the division on the hours clause was over the main struggle on the Bill, as he had all along maintained, would be also at an end. If the Government carried the clause--and the probability still was that they would carry it by a handful of votes--the two great novelties of the Bill would have been affirmed by the House. The homework in the scheduled trades would have been driven by law into inspected workshops, and the male workers in these same trades would have been brought under the time-restrictions of the Factory Acts. Compared to these two great reforms, or revolutions, the remaining clause--the landlords clause--touched, as he had already said to Fontenoy, questions of secondary rank, of mere machinery. Might not a man thereupon--might not he, George Tressady--review and reconsider his whole position? He had told Fontenoy that his vote was safe; but must that pledge extend to more than the vital stuff, the main proposals of the Bill? The hours clause?--yes. But after it?