"
"Mother was here with a copy before eleven o'clock."
Tallente made a grimace.
"Have you sworn to abjure me and all my works?"
"So much so," she told him, "that I have been here waiting for you for
at least half an hour and I have put on the gown you said you liked
best. Some one said in a book I was reading last week that affection
was proved only by trifles. I have certainly never before in my life
altered my scheme of clothes to please any man."
He raised her fingers to his lips.
"You are exercising," he said, "the most wonderful gift of your sex.
You are providing an oasis--more than that, a paradise--for a
disheartened toiler. It seems that I have enemies whose very existence
I never guessed at."
"Well, does that matter very much?" she asked cheerfully. "It was one
of your late party, wasn't it, who said that the making of enemies was
the only reward of political success?"
"A cheap enough saying," Tallente sighed, "yet with the germs of truth
in it. I don't mind the allusion to a sinister rumour. The air will be
thick with them before long.
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