"Now may I tell you just why I came to pay you this visit ?" "If there is anything more left to be said," Mr.Horlock conceded, with an air of exaggerated patience.
"There is just this," Tallente declared.

"If you had had a seat to offer me or a post in your Cabinet, I should have been compelled to decline it, just as I have declined that ridiculous offer of a peerage.
I have consented to lead the Democratic Party in the House of Commons." The Prime Minister's fingers slipped slowly from the knob of the bell.
He was a person of studied deportment.

A journalist who had once written of his courtly manners had found himself before long the sub-editor of a Government journal.

At that moment he was possessed of neither manners nor presence.

He sat gazing at Tallente with his mouth open.