igh.
Six hundred, and there would have been a new crusade. But as it is, he
is out of harmony with his times; life is too easy and mannered; the
field for a man's courage is in petty and recondite things, and Lewie is
not fitted to understand it. And all this, you see, spells a kind of
cowardice: and if you have a friend who is a hero out of joint, a great
man smothered in the wrong sort of civilization, and all the while one
who is building up for himself with the world and in his own heart the
reputation of a coward, you naturally grow hot and bitter."

The lady looked curiously at the speaker. She had never heard the
silent politician speak so earnestly before.

"It seems to me a clear case of _chercher la femme_," said she.

"That," said Wratislaw with emphasis, "is the needle-point of the whole
business. He has fallen in love with just the wrong sort of woman.
Very pretty, very good, a demure puritanical little Pharisee, clever
enough, too, to see Lewie's merits, too weak to hope to remedy them, and
too full of prejudice to accept them. There you have the makings of a
very pretty tragedy."

"I am so sorry," said the lady. She was touched by this man's anxiety
for his friend, and Mr. Lewis Haystoun, whom she was never likely to
meet again, became a figure of interest in her eyes. She turned to say
something more, but Wratislaw, having unburdened his soul to some one,
and feeling a little relieved, was watching his chief's face further
down the table. That nobleman, hopelessly ill at ease, had given up the
pretence of amiability and was now making frantic endeavours to send
mute signals across the flowers to his under secretary.

The Montrayner guests seldom linger. Within half an hour after the
ladies left the table Beauregard and Wratislaw were taking leave and
hurrying into their greatcoats.

"You are going down to the House," said the elder man, "and I'll come
too. I want to have some talk with you. I tried to catch your eye at
dinner to get you to come round and deliver me from old Montrayner, for
I had to sit on his right hand and couldn't come round to you.
Heigho-ho! I wish I was a Trappist."

The cab had turned out of Piccadilly into St. James's Street before
either man spoke again. The tossing lights of a windy autumn evening
were shimmering on the wet pavement, and faces looked spectral white in
the morris-dance of shine and shadow. Wratislaw, whose soul was sick
for high, clean winds and the great