She had to listen patiently to hours on hours of discussion as to which would be the better time.

She had to seem interested, though from the viewpoint of her private purposes nothing could have been less important.

She had no intention of permitting him to waste his life and hers in the poverty and uncertainty of public office, struggling for the applause of mobs one despised as individuals and would not permit to cross one's threshold.

But she had to let him talk on and on, and yet on.

In due season, when she was ready to speak and he to hear, she would disclose to him the future she had mapped out for him, not before.