He paused. He remembered perfectly that last year she had contrived pretty often to be left with him. Last year Mr. Higginson, as the Liberal candidate for East Mickleham, seemed about to achieve a distinction, which, owing to his defeat by an overwhelming majority, he had unfortunately not achieved. He had not been prudent. He had stood, not only for East Mickleham, but for a principle. It was an unpopular principle, and he knew it, and he had stuck to it all the same, with obstinacy and absurdity, in the teeth, the furiously gnashing teeth, of his constituency. You couldn't detach Mr. Higginson from his principle, and as long as he stuck to it a parliamentary career was closed to him. It was sad, for he had a passion for politics; he had chosen politics as the one field for the one ponderous talent he possessed. The glory of it had hung ponderously about Mr. Higginson last year; but this year, cut off from politics, it was pitiable, the nonentity he had become. Straker could read that in his lady's alienated eyes. "Last year," he continued, "you seemed to find him interesting." "You think things must be what they seem?" Her tone accused him of insufficient metaphysical acumen. "There is no necessity. Still, as I said, last year----" "Could Mr. Higginson, in any year, be interesting?" "Did you hope," Straker retorted, "to make him so by cultivating him?" "It's impossible to say what Mr. Higginson might become under--centuries of cultivation. It would take centuries." That was all very well, he said to himself. If he didn't say that Miss Tarrant had pursued Mr. Higginson, he distinctly recalled the grace with which she had allowed herself to be pursued. She _had_ cultivated him. And, having done it, having so flagrantly and palpably and under Straker's own eyes gone in for him, how on earth did she propose to get out of it now? There was, Straker said to himself again, no getting out of it. As for centuries---- "Let us go back," he persisted, "to last year." "Last year he had his uses. He was a good watch-dog." "A _what_?" "A watch-dog. He kept other people off." For a moment he was disarmed by the sheer impudence of it. He smiled a reminiscent smile. "I should have thought his function was rather, wasn't it, to draw them on?" Her triumphing eyes showed him that he had given himself into her hands. He should have been content with his reminiscent smile. Wasn't he, her eyes inquired, for a distinguished barrister, just a little bit too crude? "You thought," she said, "he was a decoy-duck? Why, wouldn't you have flown from your most adored if you'd seen her--with Mr. Higginson?" Thus deftly she wove her web and wound him into it. That was her way. She would take your own words out of your mouth and work them into the brilliant fabric, tangling you in your talk. And not only did she tangle you in your talk, she confused you in your mental processes.