of course they were sometimes ill-natured and
spiteful. But, whatever their tone, they were all tuned to the one
key--that Miss Langley was impulsively unconventional.

The Dictator was inclined to resent the intrusion of a woman into his
thoughts. For years he had been in the habit of regarding women as trees
walking. He had had a love disappointment early in life. His true love
had proved a false true love, and he had taken it very seriously--taken
it quite to heart. He was not enough of a modern London man to recognise
the fact that something of the kind happens to a good many people, and
that there are still a great many girls left to choose from. He ought to
have made nothing of it, and consoled himself easily, but he did not. So
he had lost his ideal of womanhood, and went through the world like one
deprived of a sense. The man is, on the whole, happiest whose true love
dies early, and leaves him with an ideal of womanhood which never can
change. He is, if he be at all a true man, thenceforth as one who walks
under the guidance of an angel. But Ericson's mind was put out by the
failure of his ideal. Happily he was a strong man by nature, with deep
impassioned longings and profound convictions; and going on through life
in his lonely, overcrowded way, he soon became absorbed in the
entrancing egotism of devotion to a great cause. He began to see all
things in life first as they bore on the regeneration of Gloria--now as
they bore on his restoration to Gloria. So he had been forgetting all
about women, except as ornaments of society, and occasionally as useful
mechanisms in politics.

The memory of his false true love had long faded. He did not now
particularly regret that she had been false. He did not regret it even
for her own sake--for he knew that she had got on very well in life--had
married a rich man--held a good position in society, and apparently had
all her desires gratified. It was probable--it was almost certain--that
he should meet her in London this season--and he felt no interest or
curiosity about the meeting--did not even trouble himself by wondering
whether she had been following his career with eyes in which old
memories gleamed. But after her he had done no love-making and felt
inclined for no romance. His ideal, as has been said, was gone--and he
did not care for women without an ideal to pursue.

Every night, however late, when the Dictator had got back to his rooms,
Hamilton came to see hi