of humorous urbanity, as if he were too
much interested in the world to censure it, and yet too little
interested to take it seriously. His face, with its thin austere
features and its kindly expression, showed the dryness that comes less
from age than from quality. Benham, looking at him closely, thought, "He
must be well over eighty, but he hasn't changed so much as a hair of his
head in the last twenty years."

At dinner Corinna was very gay; and her father, whose habit it was not
to inquire too deeply, observed only that she was looking remarkably
well. The dining-room was lighted by candles which flickered gently in
the breeze that rose and fell on the terrace. In this wavering
illumination innumerable little shadows, like ghosts of butterflies,
played over the faces of the two men, whose features were so much alike
and whose expressions differed so perversely. In both Nature had bred a
type; custom and tradition had moulded the plastic substance and refined
the edges; but, stronger than either custom or tradition, the individual
temperament, the inner spirit of each man, had cast the transforming
flame and shadow over the outward form. And now they were alike only in
their long, graceful figures, in their thin Roman features, in their
general air of urbane distinction.

"We were talking at the club of the strike," said the Judge, who had
finished his soup with a manner of detachment, and sat now gazing
thoughtfully at his glass of sherry. "The opinion seems to be that it
depends upon Vetch."

Benham's voice sounded slightly sardonical. "How can anything depend
upon a weathercock?"

"Well, there's a chance, isn't there, that the weather may decide it?"

"Perhaps. In the way that the Governor will find to his advantage."
Benham had leaned slightly forward, and his face looked very attractive
by the shimmering flame of the candles.

"Isn't that the way most of us decide things," asked Corinna, "if we
know what is really to our advantage?"

As Benham looked up he met her eyes. "In this case," he answered, with a
note of austerity, as if he were impatient of contradiction, "the
advantage to the public would seem to be the only one worth
considering."

For an instant a wild impulse, born of suffering nerves, passed through
Corinna's mind. She longed to cry out in the tone of Julius Gershom,
"Oh, damn the public!"--but instead she remarked in the formal accents
her grandmother had employed to smooth over awkwar