hreshold; and, yes, I don't like it. But tell me about the
house too."

"I've not seen it all," smiled the Dean. "Well, to drop our metaphor, I
think Mr. Quisante has a wonderfully acute intellect."

"Oh, yes, yes."

"And hardly a wonderfully, but a rather noticeably, blunt conscience.
Many men have, you'll say, I know. But most of the men we meet have
substitutes."

"Substitutes for conscience?" May laughed reprovingly at her companion.

"Taste, tradition, the rules of society, what young men call 'good
form.'"

"Ah, yes. And he hasn't?"

"His bringing up hasn't given them to him. He might learn them."

"Who from?"

"One would have hoped from our host, but I see no signs of it." The Dean
paused, shaking his head "A woman might teach him." He paused again
before adding with emphasis, "But I should be very sorry for her."

"Why?" The brief question was asked with averted eyes.

"Because the only woman who could do it must be the sort of woman
who--whose teeth would be set on edge by him every day till the
process--the quite uncertain process--was complete."

"Yes, she'd have to be that," murmured May Gaston.

"On the whole I think she'd have an unhappy life, and very likely fail.
But I also think that it would be the only way." His round face broke
again into its cheerful smile. "We shall have to make the best of him as
he is, Lady May," he ended. "Heaven forbid that I should encourage any
woman to the task!"

"I certainly don't think you seem likely to," she said with a laugh. "It
seems to come to this: his manners are bad and his morals are worse."

"Yes, I think so."

"But, as Dick Benyon would say, so were Napoleon's."

"Exactly, and, as we know, Napoleon's wife was not to be envied."

May Gaston was silent for a moment; then she said meditatively, "Oh,
don't you think so?", and fell again into a long silence. The Dean did
not break it; his thoughts had wandered from the hypothetical lady who
was to redeem Quisante to the realities of the great Crusade.

There seemed to May something a little inhuman in the Dean's attitude,
and indeed in the way in which everybody at Ashwood regarded Quisante.
Not even Dick Benyon was altogether free from this reproach, in spite of
his enthusiasm and his resulting blindness to Quisante's lesser, but not
less galling, faults. Not even to Dick was he a real friend; none of them
took him or offered to take him into their inner lives, or allowed him to
share their