"Miller," Dartrey intervened earnestly, "you are expounding a case from the narrowest point of view. You say that Tallente was born an aristocrat. That may or may not be true, but surely it makes his espousal of the people's cause all the more honest and convincing? For you to say that he is not a people's man, you who have heard his speeches in the house, who have read his pamphlets, who have followed, as you must have followed, his political career is sheer folly."
"Then I am content to remain a fool," Miller rejoined. "Once and for all, I decline to serve under Tallente, and I warn you that if you put him forward, if you go so far, even, as to give him a seat in the Cabinet of the Government it is your job to form, you will disunite the party and bring calamity upon us."
"Have you any further reason for your attitude," Tallente asked pointedly, "except those you have put forward?"
Miller met his questioner's earnest gaze defiantly.
Miller rose to his feet. He became a little oratorical, more than usually artificial.
"I make my appeal to you, Dartrey," he said. "You have put forward this man as your choice of a leader of the great Democratic Party, the party which is to combine all branches of Labour, the party which is to stand for the people. I charge him with having written in the last year of the war a scathing attack upon the greatest of British institutions, the trades unions, an article written from the extreme aristocratic standpoint, an article which, if published to-day and distributed broadcast amongst the miners and operatives of the north, would result in a revolution if his name were persisted in."
"I have read everything Tallente has ever written, and I have never come across any such article," Dartrey declared promptly.
"You have never come across it because it was never published," Miller continued, "and yet the fact remains that it was written and offered to the Universal Review. It was actually in type and was only held back at the earnest request of the Government, because on the very day that it should have appeared, an armistice was concluded between the railway men, the miners and the War Council, and the Government was terrified lest anything should happen to upset that armistice."