"I'm afraid," she sighed, "that our dear host's party was a failure.
You and Miller were born in different camps of life. It doesn't seem to
me that anything will ever bring you together."

"For this reason," Tallente explained eagerly. "Miller's outlook is
narrow and egotistical. He may be a shrewd politician, but there isn't
a grain of statesmanship in him. He might make an excellent chairman of
a parish council. As a Cabinet Minister he would be impossible."

"He will demand office, I am afraid," Nora remarked.

Tallente took off his hat. He was watching the lights from the two
great hotels, the red fires from the funnel of a little tug, Mack and
mysterious in the windy darkness.

"I am sick of politics," he declared suddenly. "We are a parcel of
fools. Our feet move day and night to the solemn music."

"You, of all men," she protested, "to be talking like this!"

"I mean it," he insisted, a little doggedly. "I have spent too many of
my years on the treadmill. A man was born to be either an egoist and
parcel out the earth according to his tastes, or to develop like Dartrey
into a dreamer.--Curse you!" he added, suddenly shaking his fist at the
tall towers of the Houses of Parliament. "You're like an infernal
boarding-school, with your detentions and impositions and castigations.
There must be something beyond."

"A Cabinet Minister--" she began.