es, deeply blue, with
black lashes encircling them, betrayed amazement and curiosity--so John
thought--rather than anger. "You don't?" he continued. "Why not? The
old Demon likes you; he says you got him out of a tight place. Why
don't you like him, Verney?"

John's mind had to speculate vaguely whether or not Desmond knew the
nature of the tight place--_tight_ was such a very descriptive
adjective--out of which he had pulled Scaife. Then he said nervously--

"I don't like him because--because he likes--you."

"Likes me? What a rum 'un you are, Verney! Why shouldn't he like me?"

"Because," said John, boldly meeting the emergency with the conviction
that he had burnt his ships, and must advance without fear, "because
he's not half good enough for you."

Desmond burst out laughing; the clear ringing laugh of his father,
which had often allayed an incipient mutiny below the gangway, and
charmed aside the impending disaster of a snatch-division. And it is
on _one's own side_ in the House of Commons that good temper tells
preeminently.

"Not good enough for me!" he repeated. "Thanks awfully. Evidently you
have a high opinion of--_me_."

"Yes," said John.

The quiet monosyllable, so soberly, so seriously uttered, challenged
Desmond's attention. He stared for a moment at John's face--not an
attractive object. Blood and mud disfigured it. But the grey eyes met
the blue unwaveringly. Desmond flushed.

"You've stuck me on a sort of pedestal." His tone was as serious as
John's.

"Yes," said John.

They were opposite the Music Schools. The other Manorites had run on.
For the moment they stood alone, ten thousand leagues from Harrow,
alone in those sublimated spaces where soul meets soul unfettered by
flesh. Afterwards, not then, John knew that this was so. He met the
real Desmond for the first time, and Desmond met the real John in a
thoroughfare other than that which leads to the Manor, other than that
which leads to any house built by human hands, upon the shining highway
of Heaven.

Shall we try to set down Desmond's feelings at this crisis? Till now,
his life had run gaily through fragrant gardens, so to speak:
pleasaunces full of flowers, of sweet-smelling herbs, of stately trees,
a paradise indeed from which the ugly, the crude, the harmful had been
rigorously excluded. Happy the boy who has such a home as was allotted
to Harry Desmond! And from it, ever since he could remember, he had
r