He had no difficulty in setting at work the machinery of social influence, and the result was the offer of a private-secretaryship on the part of an under-secretary of state. He accepted it. It would not only afford him an insight into the practical working of politics, but would give him an opportunity of making himself known to the chiefs of the Conservative party and securing their influence when he should seek to enter Parliament. When everything was settled he informed Clytie casually in Paris of his new ambitions. She, too, had wondered what outlet this man of restless action would find for his energies, and, shrinking from inquiry, had been filled with vague uneasiness. Now she felt that he had made a worthy choice and in spite of dubious encouragement strove to identify herself with his interests. True, she contemplated with a little dismay the abandonment of her own pet social theories, which tended towards an advanced and somewhat inchoate Radicalism, and the espousal of a cause forming part of a scheme of life against which she had so passionately rebelled. But she wilfully, almost desperately, shut her eyes against all this. She would give her heart and soul to Thornton's glory, and the sacrifice of principle on her part would only accentuate the triumph. But this sacrifice Thornton did not concern himself to realise. Very few men ever do. As we have seen, he laughed at it. He entered upon his political duties as soon as they returned to London, led a busy life of work and pleasure, throwing into both the energy of his strong vitality. He was not a man to wait. Social position, power, must be wrested from the world by force of arms. The sooner the struggle began and the fiercer it was fought the sooner would come success. It behoved Clytie, therefore, to enter upon it with him at once. Before she could realise herself as mistress of a large house, as cut off from the old habits that had invested London with earnest charm, as sundered from Kent and Winifred, as deprived of her art and her dreams and ambition, she found herself caught up in the whirl of London society, bidden to cultivate its conventions, flatter its weaknesses, intrigue, gossip, dance, drive, rush, without a moment's pause to think. And thus began her new life. It was not the one she had dreamed of. In fact she hardly recognised herself in her deliberate subordination to a nature dominating hers. She let herself drift, abandoning herself to the current, clutching hold of her love towards her husband as the only plank saving her from destruction.