fool you are. The way this world's run, you can't avoid it,
anyhow."

I knew that what he said was true, but I found it damping. It fitted all
too well with the coming realism of day. The contours of the landscape
were slowly resigning themselves to the formal attitudes imposed upon them
by expectation. The blood of colour was beginning to run weakly through
the monochrome. The nearer slopes of the hill and the leaves of the trees
were already professing a resolute green. Moment by moment the familiar
was taking prudent shape, preparing itself for the autocrat whose
outriders were multitudinously busy about their warnings of his approach.
Presently the scene would take on the natural beauty of our desire, but
the actual process of transformation rather depressed me that morning. I
had been so deeply in love with the night.

I took up my companion's last sentence--spoken, I fancied, with a
suggestion of brooding antagonism.

"You think the world might be 'run,' at least, more interestingly?" I put
in.

"More sensibly," he said in a voice that hinted a reserve of violence.
"There's no _sense_ in it, the way we look at things. Only we don't look
at 'em, most of us, not with any intelligence. We just take everything for
granted because we happen to be used to it, that's all."

"But would any form of socialism..." I tried tentatively.

"I don't know that I'm a socialist," he returned. "I don't belong to any
union, or anything of that kind." He stopped and looked at me with a
defiant stare that was quite visible now. "You know who I am, I suppose?"
he challenged me.

"No idea," I said.

"Banks, the chauffeur," he said, as if he were giving himself up as a
well-known criminal.

I was not entirely unprepared for that reply, but I had no tactful answer
to make. I rejected the spontaneous impulse that arose, as I thought quite
fantastically, to say "I believe I have met your sister;" and fell back on
an orthodox "Well?" I tried to convey the effect that I still waited to be
shocked.

"I suppose you're staying up at the Hall?" he said.

"For the week-end only," I admitted.

"Been a pretty fuss there, I take it?" he said.

"Some," I acknowledged.

He set his resolute-looking mouth and submitted me to cross-examination.

"Been looking for me?" he began.

"In a way. Frank Jervaise and I went up to your father's house."

"What time?"

"Between two and three."

"Not since?"

"No; we left about half-past two."