She was teasing him on the subject of some of his Labor friends in the
House of Commons. It appeared that she had made the Curate, who was a
Christian Socialist, take her to a Labor Conference at Bristol, where
all the leaders were present, and her account of the proceedings and the
types was both amusing and malicious. It was the first time that Marsham
had known her attempt any conversation of the kind, and he recognized
that her cleverness was developing. But many of the remarks she made on
persons well known to him annoyed him extremely, and he could not help
trying to punish her for them. Alicia, however, was not easily punished.
She evaded him with a mosquito-like quickness, returning to the charge
as soon as he imagined himself to have scored with an irrelevance or an
absurdity which would have been exasperating in a man, but had somehow
to be answered and politely handled from a woman. He lost his footing
continually; and as she had none to lose, she had, on the whole, the
best of it.
[Illustration: "ALICIA UPRIGHT IN HER CORNER--OLIVER, DEEP IN HIS
ARMCHAIR"]
Then--in the very midst of it--he remembered, with a pang, another
skirmish, another battle of words--with another adversary, in a
different scene.
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