She had received him with unusual warmth, and an eagerness of look that seemed to show she had at least as much to say to him as he to her. And at last his turn came. She took some of her guests into the garden. George followed, and they found themselves side by side. He noticed that she was very pale. Yet how was it that fatigue and anxiety instead of marring her physical charm, only increased it? This thin black dress in which the tall figure moved so finely, the black lace folded in a fashion all her own about her neck and breast, the waving lines of hair above the delicate stateliness of the brow--those slight tragic hollows in cheek and temple with their tale of spirit and passionate feeling, and all the ebb and flow of noble life--he had never felt her so rare, so adorable. "Well! what do you think of it all to-day? Are you still inclined to prophesy?" she asked him, smiling. "I might be--if I saw any chance of the man you want. But he doesn't seem to be forthcoming, and--" "And to-morrow is the end!" "The Government has quite made up its mind not to take defeat--not to accept modifications?" She shook her head. They were standing at the end of the garden, looking into the brightly lit windows of the Board School, where evening-classes were going on. She gave a long sigh. "As for us personally, we can only be thankful to have it over. Neither of us could have borne it much longer. I suppose, when the crisis is all over, we shall go away for a long time." By "the crisis" she meant, of course, the resignation of Ministers and a change of Government. So that a few days hence she would be no longer within his reach at all. Maxwell, once out of office, would, no doubt, for a long while to come prefer to spend the greater part of his time in Brookshire, away from politics. A sudden sharp perception woke in Tressady of what it would mean to him to find himself in a world where, on going out of a morning, it would be no longer possible to come across her. At last she broke the silence. "How little I really thought, in spite of all one's anxiety, that Lord Fontenoy was going to win! He has played his cards amazingly well." George took no notice. Thoughts were whirling in his brain. "What would you say to me, I wonder," he said at last, "if _I_ were to try the part?" He spoke in a bantering tone, poking at the black London earth with his stick. "What part?" "Well, it seems to me I might put the case. One wants to argue the thing in a common-sense way. I don't feel towards this clause as I did towards the others. I know a good many men don't." He turned to her with a light composure. She stared in bewilderment. "I don't understand."