“But, my dear Corinna,” said he. “I’ve come to see you, as an old friend. I just want to know how you’re getting on. What’s the good of a political argument between us two? You may be wrong or you may be right. I haven’t studied the question. Let us drop it from a contentious point of view. Let us meet humanly. Or if you like, let us tell each other the outside things that have happened to us. You haven’t even asked me why I’m here. You haven’t asked after Félise, or Fortinbras, or Bigourdin.” He waxed warm. “I’ve just come from Brantôme. Surely you must have some grateful memories of the folks there. They treated you splendidly. Surely you must still take some interest in them.” Corinna supported herself on an outspread hand on the hearthrug. “Do you want me to tell you the truth?” She held him with her pained blue eyes. “I don’t take an interest in any damned thing in God’s universe.” “May I smoke?” said Martin. He lit a cigarette, after having offered her his case which she waved aside impatiently. “If that is so,” said he, “what in the world is the meaning of all the stuff you have just been talking?” “I thought you had the sense to have learned something about me. How otherwise am I to earn my living? We’ve gone over the ground a hundred times. This is a way, anyhow, and it’s exciting. It keeps one from thinking of anything else. I’ve been to prison.” Martin gasped, asked her if she had hunger-struck. “I tried, but I hadn’t the pluck or the hysteria. Isabel Banditch can do it.” She lowered her voice and waved towards her concealed companion. “I can’t. She believes in the whole thing. The vote will bring along the millennium. Once we have the power, men are going to be as good as little cherubs terminating in wings round their necks. Drink will disappear. Wives shall be like the fruitful soda-water siphon on the sideboard, and there will be no more struggle for existence and no more wars. Oh! the earth is going to be a devil of a place when we’ve finished with it.” “Do you talk like this to Miss Banditch?” asked Martin. She smiled for the first time, and shook her head. “On the whole you’re rather a commonplace person, Martin,” she replied, “but you have one remarkable quality. You always seem to compel me to tell you the truth. I don’t know why. Perhaps it is just to puzzle you and annoy you and hurt you.” “Why should you want to hurt me?” She shrugged her shoulders, and sat with her hands clasping her knees. “Well—for one thing, you were my intimate companion for three months and never for a single second did you think of making love to me. For all the impression I made on you I might have been your austere maiden aunt. Sometimes I’ve wanted to take you between my teeth and shake you as a terrier shakes a rat. Instead, like an ass, I’ve told you the blatant truth.”