very mysterious person."

"In some respects I believe that I am," he assented equably. "My
peculiar beliefs are responsible for a good deal, you see--and certain
circumstances. . . . But tell me--we have both agreed to be
frank--why have you changed your attitude towards me so completely? I
scarcely dared to hope even for your recognition this morning."

She was suddenly thoughtful.

"That was the very question I was asking myself when we crossed the
street just now," she remarked, with a faint smile.

Maraton was conscious of a curious and undefined sense of pleasure in
her words. In the act of crossing he had held her arm for a few
moments, and though her assent to his physical guidance had been purely
negative, there was yet something about it which had given him a vague
pleasure. Instinctively he knew that she was of the order of women to
whom the merest touch from a man whom they disliked would have been
torture.

"I think," she went on, "that it is because I am trying to adopt my
uncle's point of view towards you."

"And what is your uncle's point of view?"

"He believes you," she declared, "to be a very dangerous person, a rabid
enthusiast with brains and also stability--the most difficult order of
person in the world to deal with."

"Anything else?"

"He believes you," she continued, "to be harmless enough at a wholesome
period of our country's history. Just now, he told me yesterday, that
he considered it was within your power to bring something very much like
ruin upon the country."

Maraton was silent. He felt singularly indisposed for argument. Every
condition of life just then seemed too pleasant. They were walking in
the shade, and a soft west wind was rustling in the trees above their
heads.

"There are, after all," she said, "so many happy people in the world.
Is it worth while to drag down the pillars, to bring so much misery into
the world for the sake of a dream?"

"I am no dreamer," he insisted quietly. "It is possible to make
absolute laws for the future with the same precision as one can extract
examples from the history of the past."

"But human nature," she objected, "is always a shifting quality."

"Only in detail. The heart and lungs of it are the same in all ages."

They crossed the road and turned into St. James's Park. He paused for
a moment to look at the front of Buckingham Palace.

"A hateful sight to you, of course," she murmured.

"Not in the least," he assured he