still amply worth living, and ginger was still hot in the
mouth.

This was his usual philosophy. Religiously he was a sceptic, enormously
interested in religion. Should he ever become Prime Minister, as Lady
Tranmore prophesied, he would know much more theology than the bishops
he might be called on to appoint. Politically, at the same time, he was
an aristocrat, enormously interested in liberty. The absurdities of his
own class were still more plain to him perhaps than the absurdities of
the populace. But had he lived a couple of generations earlier he would
have gone with passion for Catholic emancipation, and boggled at the
Reform Bill. And if fate had thrown him on earlier days still, he would
not, like Falkland, have died ingeminating peace; he would have fought;
but on which side, no friend of his--up till now--could have been quite
sure. To have the reputation of an idler, and to be in truth a plodding
and unwearied student; this, at any rate, pleased him. To avow an
enthusiasm, or an affection, generally seemed to him an indelicacy; only
two or three people in the world knew what was the real quality of his
heart. Yet no man feigns shirking without in some measure learning to
shirk; and there were certain true indolences and sybaritisms in Ashe of
which he was fully and contemptuously aware, without either wishing or
feeling himself able to break the yoke of them.

At the present moment, however, he was rather conscious of much unusual
stirring and exaltation of personality. As he stood looking out into the
English night the currents of his blood ran free and fast. Never had he
felt the natural appetite for living so strong in him, combined with
what seemed to be at once a divination of coming change, and a thirst
for it. Was it the mere advancement of his fortunes--or something
infinitely subtler and sweeter? It was as though waves of softness and
of yearning welled up from some unknown source, seeking an object and an
outlet.

As he stood there dreaming, he suddenly became conscious of sounds in
the room overhead. Or rather in the now absolute stillness of the rest
of the house he realized that the movements and voices above him, which
had really been going on since he entered his room, persisted when
everything else had died away.

Two people were talking; or rather one voice ran on perpetually, broken
at intervals by the other. He began to suspect to whom the voice
belonged; and as he did so, the window