He and Lady Coryston were closeted together for nearly an hour. Had any one been sitting in the adjoining room they would have heard, save on two occasions when the raised voices clashed together, but little variation in the tones of the combatants. When the conference broke up and Coryston departed Lady Coryston was left alone for a little while. She sat motionless in her chair beside her writing-table. Animation and color faded slowly from her features; and before her trance of thought was broken by the arrival of a servant announcing that Sir Wilfrid Bury had arrived, one who knew her well would have been startled by certain subtle changes in her aspect. Coryston, meanwhile, made his way to the great library in the north wing, looking for Lester. He found the young librarian at his desk, with a fifteenth-century MS. before him, which he was describing and cataloguing. The beautiful pages sparkling with color and gold were held open by glass weights, and the young man's face, as he bent over his task, showed the happy abstraction of the scholar. All around him rose the latticed walls of the library, holding on one side a collection of MSS., on the other of early printed books, well known to learned Europe. Wandering gleams from the showery sky outside lit up the faded richness of the room, the pale brown and yellows of the books, the sharp black and white of the old engravings hanging among them. The windows were wide open, and occasionally a westerly gust would blow in upon the floor petals from a fruit tree in blossom just outside. Coryston came in, looking rather flushed and excited, and took a seat on the edge of the table where Lester was working, his hands in his pockets. "What a blessed place!" he said, glancing round him. Lester looked up and smiled absently. "Not bad?" Silence a moment. Then Coryston said, with sudden vehemence: "Don't you go into politics, Lester!" "No fear, old man. But what's up, now? You seem to have been ragging a good deal." "I've been 'following the gleam,'" said Coryston, with a sarcastic mouth. "Or to put it in another way--there's a hot coal in me that makes me do certain things. I dignify it by calling it a sense of justice. What is it? I don't know. I say, Lester, are you a Suffragist?" "Haven't made up my mind." "I am--theoretically. But upon my word--politics plays the deuce with women. And sometimes I think that women will play the deuce with politics." "You mean they're so unmeasured?" said Lester, cautiously. Coryston shook his head vaguely, staring at the floor, but presently broke out: "I say, Lester, if we can't find generosity, tenderness, an open mind--among women--where the devil are we going to find them?" He stood up. "And politics kills all that kind of thing." "'Physician, heal thyself,'" laughed Lester.