ordered the coachman to drive to the House of Commons. Suddenly he pulled the check-string.     

       “Call at Dorset House,” he directed.     

       Mr. Sabin lingered till nearly the last of the guests had gone. Then he led Helene once more into the winter gardens.     

       “May I detain you for one moment’s gossip?” he asked. “I see your carriage at the door.”      

       She laughed.     

       “It is nothing,” she declared. “I must drive in the Park for an hour. One sees one’s friends, and it is cool and refreshing after these heated rooms. But at any time. Talk to me as long as you will, and then I will drop you at the Carlton.”      

       “It is of Brott!” he remarked. “Ah, I thank you, I will smoke. Your husband’s taste in cigarettes is excellent.”      

       “Perhaps mine!” she laughed.     

       Mr. Sabin shrugged his shoulders.     

       “In either case I congratulate you. This man Brott. He interests me.”      

       “He interests every one. Why not? He is a great personality.”      

       “Politically,” Mr. Sabin said, “the gauge of his success is of course the measure of the man. But he himself—what manner of a man is he?”      

       She tapped with her fingers upon the little table by their side.     

       “He is rich,” she said, “and an uncommon mixture of the student and the man of society. He refuses many more invitations than he accepts, he entertains very seldom but very magnificently. He has never been known to pay marked attentions to any woman, even the scandal of the clubs has passed him by. What else can I say about him, I wonder?” she continued reflectively. “Nothing, I think, except this. He is a strong man. You know that that counts for much.”      

       Mr. Sabin was silent. Perhaps he was measuring his strength in some imagined encounter with this man. Something in his face alarmed Helene. She suddenly leaned forward and looked at him more closely.     

       

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