and his circumstances were not such as to enable him
to overcome the bent of his disposition; whatever else he was or might
become, he would be self-seeking too, and it would be impossible ever to
make him steadily and deliberately forgetful of himself.

But as time went on, another way opened before Dick's eyes and was
cautiously and tentatively hinted at to his confidant, the Dean. The
Dean, having seen a little and heard much of Quisante, was inclined to be
encouraging. There were in him possibilities not to be found in
Marchmont. He was not fastidious, he would not trouble himself or other
people about ultimates, above all he could be fired with imagination.
Once that was achieved, he would speak and seem as though he were all
that the ideal leader ought to be, as though inspiration filled him; he
would express what Dick could only feel and the Dean do no more than
adumbrate; nay, in time, as he grew zealous in the cause, his
self-interest and personal ambition would be conquered, or at least would
be so blended and fused with the nobility of the cause as to lose any
grossness or meanness which might be thought to characterise them in an
uncompounded condition. All this might be achieved if only the great idea
could be made to seem great enough and the potentialities which lay in
its realisation invested with enough pomp and dignity. After all was not
such a blend of things personal and things beyond and higher than the
personal as much as could reasonably be expected from human beings, and
adequate to the needs of a work-a-day world?

"I don't want to be a bishop, but I do mean to stick to my deanery
through thick and thin," said the Dean, smiling. Dick understood him to
mean that allowance must be made for the personal element, and that a man
might serve a cause very usefully without being prepared to go quite as
far as the stake, or even the workhouse, for it; if this were not so,
there would be less competition for places in State and Church.

Such great schemes for causing right ideas to prevail in things spiritual
and temporal and for placing the right men in the right positions to
ensure this important result are material here only so far as they
influence the career or illustrate the character of individuals. The
Crusade did not perhaps do as much towards altering the face of the
world, or even of this island, as it was intended to, but it had a
considerable, if temporary, effect on current politics, and it