"A very beautiful desert," said Peter. He was feasting on the superb line of a moor-end, red with the heather. "You must see it in the winter. I went through last election with my uncle. It was December, and we did well if we managed to keep half our appointments." "Tell me about your uncle." "He's dying, Peter." Marbury conveyed this as a simple fact. He did not intend an effect. "You mean that he's very ill," suggested Peter. "I mean that he's dying. The doctors give him six months or a year in Egypt. Here they allow him till the autumn." "When is he going away?" "He isn't going away," answered Marbury. "He thinks it worth while to die at home." Again Marbury spoke without insisting in the least on the heroic implication of his words. "But six months of life and the sun," protested Peter. "Six months is not long. We have lived at Highbury for a thousand years. Besides, my uncle wants things to go smoothly when he dies. He is posting me up in the estate--all the small traditional things." Marbury talked of these things with a curious tranquillity. He simply recorded them. He fell very silent; and at the journey's end looked with interest at the large old house at which they had arrived. Marbury took Peter upstairs to a room beside his own, and left to dress quickly for dinner. He would come back for Peter and show him the way down. When Peter was ready, he stood for a few minutes at the window. He looked on to a terrace and a garden which ended abruptly and fell suddenly to the moor. At the end of the terrace, magnificently poised and fronting desolation, was the copy of a famous statue by a contemporary sculptor, audaciously asserting the triumph of art--the figure of a naked youth superbly defiant. Soon Marbury joined Peter at the window and put a hand affectionately on his shoulder. "That's what I mean," he said, following Peter's look towards the statue in silhouette against the moor, "when I say that this place seems to fly in Nature's face. He's insolent, don't you think? He's looking over thirty miles of moor--not a house between himself and the open sea. In the winter the snow piles up against him, and storms bang into him from the German Ocean. He is the last exquisite word of the twentieth century asserting our mastery over all that." Marbury waved his arm towards the open moor, and laughed an apology: "He usually works me up like that. Let's have some dinner." They went down, and Peter was made acquainted with many people whose names he tried to remember. His mind was whirling with impressions, unable to settle upon anything definite till, at dinner, he had had time to recover from a sensation of being too much honoured. This sensation had invaded him at being introduced by Marbury to an exquisite young woman. "Peter," he said, "this is my sister. Look after him, Mary, and tell him who everybody is." Then Marbury had disappeared, leaving Peter shyly rising to her light chatter.