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Rh she turned away with her impatience controlled. "It's magnificent!"

"The fire-back?"

"Everything—everywhere. I don't understand your haggling."

He hesitated. "That's because you're ignorant." Then seeing in the light of her eye that he had applied to her the word in the language she least liked, he hastened to attenuate. "I mean of what's behind my reserves."

She was silent in a way that made their talk more of a discussion than if she had spoken. "What is behind them?" she presently asked.

"Why, my whole political history. Everything I've said, everything I've done. My scorching addresses and letters, reproduced in all the papers. I needn't go into details, but I'm a pure, passionate, pledged Radical."

Mrs. Gracedew looked him full in the face. "Well, what if you are?"

He broke into mirth at her tone. "Simply this—that I can't therefore, from one day to the other, pop up at Gossage in the purple pomp of the opposite camp. There's a want of transition. It may be timid of me—it may be abject. But I can't."

If she was not yet prepared to contest she