"Really," she insisted earnestly, "this sort of thing does not
amuse me. I avoid it even amongst my own friends."
"Am I not a friend?" he demanded.
"So far as regards our work, you certainly are," she admitted.
"Outside it, I do not think that we could ever have much to say to
one another."
"Why not?" he objected, a little sharply. "We're as close
together in our work and aims as any two people could be.
Perhaps," he went on, after a moment's hesitation and a careful
glance around, "I ought to take you into my confidence as regards
my personal position."
"I am not inviting anything of the sort," she observed, with faint
but wasted sarcasm.
"You know me, of course," he went on, "only as the late manager of
a firm of timber merchants and the present elected representative
of the allied Timber and Shipbuilding Trades Unions. What you do
not know"--a queer note of triumph stealing into his tone "is
that I am a wealthy man."
She raised her eyebrows.
"I imagined," she remarked, "that all Labour leaders were like the
Apostles--took no thought for such things."
"One must always keep one's eye on the main chance; Miss Abbeway,"
he protested, "or how would things be when one came to think of
marriage, for instance?"
"Where did your money come from?" she asked bluntly.
Her question was framed simply to direct him from a repulsive
subject. His embarrassment, however, afforded her food for future
thought.
"I have saved money all my life," he confided eagerly.
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