'Oh! A--a--good-bye.' With a gesture of 'the country's going to the dogs,' Farnborough opened the doors and closed them behind him. Jean had rung the bell. She came back with her eyes on the ground, and paused near the table where the crumpled envelope made a dash of yellow-brown on the polished satinwood. Stonor stood studying the carpet, more concern in his face now that there was only Jean to see it. '"Political dynamite," eh?' he repeated, walking a few paces away. He returned with, 'After all, women are much more Conservative _naturally_ than men, aren't they?' Jean's lowered eyes showed no spark of interest in the issue. Her only motion, an occasional locking and unlocking of her fingers. But no words came. He glanced at her, as if for the first time conscious of her silence. 'You see now'--he threw himself into a chair--'one reason why I've encouraged you to take an interest in public questions. Because people like us don't go screaming about it, is no sign we don't--some of us--see what's on the way. However little they may want to, women of our class will have to come into line. All the best things in the world, everything civilization has won, will be in danger if--when this change comes--the only women who have practical political training are the women of the lower classes. Women of the lower classes,' he repeated, '_and_'--the line between his eyebrows deepening--'women inoculated by the Socialist virus.' 'Geoffrey!' He was in no mood to discuss a concrete type. To so intelligent a girl, a hint should be enough. He drew the telegraph-form that still lay on the table towards him. 'Let us see how it would sound, shall we?' He detached a gold pencil from one end of his watch-chain, and, with face more and more intent, bent over the paper, writing. The girl opened her lips more than once to speak, and each time fell back again on her silent, half-incredulous misery. When Stonor finished writing, he held the paper off, smiling a little, with the craftsman's satisfaction in his work, and more than a touch of shrewd malice-- 'Enough dynamite in that,' he commented. 'Rather too much, isn't there, little girl?' 'Geoffrey, I know her story.' He looked at her for the first time since Farnborough left the room. 'Whose story?' 'Miss Levering's.' '_Whose?_' He crushed the rough note of his manifesto into his pocket. 'Vida Levering's.' He stared at the girl, till across the moment's silence a cry of misery went out-- 'Why did you desert her?' 'I?' he said, like one staggered by the sheer wildness of the charge. '_I?_' But no comfort of doubting seemed to cross the darkness of Jean's backward look into the past. 'Oh, why did you do it?' 'What, in the name of----? What has she been saying to you?'