ut it won't, Eustace; the public man in you is far stronger than the
other. You want leadership more than you want love. Your sacrifice will
kill your affection; what you imagine is your loss and hurt, will prove
to be this lady's in the end."

Miltoun smiled.

Lord Dennis continued very dryly and with a touch of malice:

"You are not listening to me; but I can see very well that the process
has begun already underneath. There's a curious streak of the Jesuit in
you, Eustace. What you don't want to see, you won't look at."

"You advise me, then, to compromise?"

"On the contrary, I point out that you will be compromising if you try to
keep both your conscience and your love. You will be seeking to have, it
both ways."

"That is interesting."

"And you will find yourself having it neither," said Lord Dennis sharply.

Miltoun rose. "In other words, you, like the others, recommend me to
desert this lady who loves me, and whom I love. And yet, Uncle, they say
that in your own case----"

But Lord Dennis had risen, too, having lost all the appanage and manner
of old age.

"Of my own case," he said bluntly, "we won't talk. I don't advise you to
desert anyone; you quite mistake me. I advise you to know yourself. And
I tell you my opinion of you--you were cut out by Nature for a statesman,
not a lover! There's something dried-up in you, Eustace; I'm not sure
there isn't something dried-up in all our caste. We've had to do with
forms and ceremonies too long. We're not good at taking the lyrical
point of view."

"Unfortunately," said Miltoun, "I cannot, to fit in with a theory of
yours, commit a baseness."

Lord Dennis began pacing up and down. He was keeping his lips closed
very tight.

"A man who gives advice," he said at last, "is always something of a
fool. For all that, you have mistaken mine. I am not so presumptuous as
to attempt to enter the inner chamber of your spirit. I have merely told
you that, in my opinion, it would be more honest to yourself, and fairer
to this lady, to compound with your conscience, and keep both your love
and your public life, than to pretend that you were capable of
sacrificing what I know is the stronger element in you for the sake of
the weaker. You remember the saying, Democritus I think: 'each man's
nature or character is his fate or God'. I recommend it to you."

For a full minute Miltoun stood without replying, then said:

"I am sorry to have troubled y