t was his, after he had showered benefits upon them, that he
let his place and hasn't been there since."

"That's so like people, to ignore libraries and village halls, and
shriek for the right to get over a certain stile, or go down a muddy
path that leads from nothing to nowhere."

"The desire of the star for the moth!"

"You call humanity a star?"

"I think there is a great brightness burning in it; don't you?"

"There seems to be in Mr. Armine, certainly. What an enthusiastic look
he has! How could he get wrong with his tenants?"

"It may have been his enthusiasm, his great expectations, his ideality.
Perhaps he puzzled his people, asked too much imagination, too much
sacred fire from them. And then he has immense ideas about honesty, and
the rights of the individual; and, in fact, about a good many things
that seldom bother the head of the average man."

"Don't tell me he has developed into a crank," said Mrs. Derringham.
"There's something so underbred about crankiness; and the Harwich family
have always been essentially aristocrats."

"I shouldn't think Armine was a crank, but I do think he is an idealist.
He considers Watts's allegorical pictures the greatest things in Art
that have been done since Botticelli enshrined Purity in paint. In
modern music Elgar's his man; in modern literature, Tolstoy. He loves
those with ideals, even if their ideals are not his. I do not say he is
an artist. He is not. His motto is not 'Art for art's sake,' but 'Art
for man's sake.'"

"He is a humanitarian?"

"And a great believer."

"In man?"

"In the good that is in man. I often think at the back of his mind, or
heart, he believes that the act of belief is almost an act of creation."

"You mean, for instance, that if you believe in a man's truthfulness you
make him a truthful man?"

"Yes."

"Oh, Doctor Isaacson," said Lady O'Ryan, "do introduce Mr. Armine to my
husband, and make him believe my husband is a miser instead of a
spendthrift. It would be such a mercy to the family. We might begin to
pay off the mortgage on the castle."

The conversation took a frivolous turn, and died in laughter.

But towards the end of dinner Mrs. Derringham again spoke of Nigel
Armine, asking:

"And what does Mr. Armine do now?"

"He went to Egypt after he let his place, bought some land there, in the
Fayyum, I believe, and has been living on it a good deal. I think he has
been making some experiments in farming."

"And d