"I wish I were not changing sides too," said Christian, catching at a
sentence, in a momentary lull of the roaring in the chimney. "Sides of
the Channel, I mean--I prefer this side!"

"Do you? Do you?" said Barty, intensely. "I'm glad you do! I feel
often as if no one cared for this miserable country except for what
they could get out of it! At the election it would have sickened you,
the bargaining, and the humbugging, and the lies. Larry was the only
man that ran straight, and they jockeyed him--"

"I'm sure _you_ ran straight," said Christian, with sympathy in
her voice. Piercing her weariness and preoccupation was the feeling
that he had something to say that lay under this babble of
conversation. He was wrapping himself in a cloak of verbiage, but
above the cloak his tormented eyes met hers, and the pain in them hurt
her.

"Me? Oh, I only ran after Larry. I thought it was a shabby thing of
the Unionists not to have supported him--" he stopped abruptly,
remembering Major Talbot-Lowry's abstention, remembering also the
feud, of which he knew only that he had never wholly divined its
origin, between Coppinger's Court and Mount Music. He cursed himself
for a fool. He had not meant to talk politics, but what he had come
through the storm to say was so difficult. He looked at Christian with
agony. Had she minded what he said about the Unionists? He began to
talk again, very fast and incoherently.

"Miss Christian, I said awhile ago everything was changing in Ireland.
There's big changes coming, even hereabouts, things I couldn't believe
would ever happen. I've recently learned a--a fact--a statement that
I'm not at liberty to repeat. I was--I may say that I was shocked--but
Miss Christian--" the agony in his eyes was in his voice. "Oh! Miss
Christian, for God's sake, believe that I knew nothing of it till this
day!"

He stood up, steadying himself with a hand on one of the high marble
pillars of the mantelpiece.

"Knew nothing of what?" said Christian, thinking she had mistaken what
he had said.

"I can't tell you--you'll know soon enough--only I'm just asking you
to believe that I had neither part nor lot in it!"

Christian had risen, and was standing up; he came a step nearer.

"I just want you to understand, Miss Christian, that in this world
there is no one I regard like you--no one, nor ever was, nor ever will
be--but don't mind that, I only want to say that if there is anything
in this earthly world th