t is to be mine, is it?

MRS. G. I wanted to say, Mr. Morley, how good I think you have always been
to me.

MORLEY. I, dear lady? I?

MRS. G. I must so often have been in the way without knowing it. You see,
you and I think differently. We belong to different schools.

MORLEY. If you go on, I shall have to say "angel," again. That is all I
_can_ say.

MRS. G. (_tremulously_). Oh, Mr. Morley, you will tell me! Is this
the end? Has he--has he, after all, been a failure?

MORLEY. My dear lady, he has been an epoch.

MRS. G. Aren't epochs failures, sometimes?

MORLEY. Even so, they count; we have to reckon with them. No, he is no
failure; though it may seem like it just now. Don't pay too much attention
to what the papers will say. He doesn't, though he reads them. Look at him
now!--does that look like failure?

(_He points to the exuberantly energetic figure intensely absorbed in
its game_.)

MRS. G. He is putting it on to-night a little, for _me_, Mr. Morley.
He knows I am watching him. Tell me how he seemed when he first spoke to
you. Was he feeling it--much?

MORLEY. Oh, deeply, of course! He believes that on a direct appeal we
could win the election.

MRS. G. And you?

MORLEY. I don't. But all the same I hold it the right thing to do. Great
causes must face and number their defeats. That is how they come to
victory.

MRS. G. And now that will be in other hands, not his. Suppose he should
not live to see it. Oh, Mr. Morley, Mr. Morley, how am I going to bear it!

MORLEY. Dear lady, I don't usually praise the great altitudes. May I speak
in his praise, just for once, to-night? As a rather faithless man myself--
not believing or expecting too much of human nature--I see him now,
looking back, more than anything else as a man of faith.

MRS. G. Ah, yes. To him religion has always meant everything.

MORLEY. Faith in himself, I meant.

MRS. G. Of course; he had to have that, too.

MORLEY. And I believe in him still, more now than ever. They can remove
him; they cannot remove Ireland. He may have made mistakes and misjudged
characters; he may not have solved the immediate problem either wisely or
well. But this he has done, to our honour and to his own: he has given us
the cause of liberty as a sacred trust. If we break faith with that, we
ourselves shall be broken--and we shall deserve it.

MRS. G. You think that--possible?

MORLEY. I would rather not think anything just now. The game is over; I
m