"Ah, but it's our _business_!'"--Coryston smote the table beside him--"our dusty, d--d business. We've got somehow to push and harry and drive this beastly world into some sort of decency. But the women!--oughtn't they to be in the shrine--tending the mystic fire? What if the fire goes out--if the heart of the nation dies?" Lester's blue-gray eyes looked up quietly. There was sympathy in them, but he said nothing. Coryston tramped half-way to the library door, then turned back. "My mother's quite a good woman," he said, abruptly. "There are no great scandals on this estate--it's better managed than most. But because of this poison of politics, no one can call their souls their own. If she'd let them live their own lives they'd adore her." "The trade-unions are just the same." "I believe you!" said Coryston. "Freedom's a lost art in England--from Parliament downward. Well, well--Good-by!" "Coryston!" "Yes?" Lord Coryston paused with his hand on the door. "Don't take the chair for Glenwilliam?" "By George, I will!" Coryston's eyes flamed. And going out he noisily shut the door. * * * * * Lester was left to his work. But his mood had been diverted, and he presently found that he was wasting time. He walked to the window, and stood there gazing at the bright flower-beds in the formal garden, the fountain plashing in its center, the low hills and woods that closed the horizon, the villages with their church-towers, piercing the shelter of the woods. May had drawn over the whole her first veils of green. The English perfection, the English mellowness, was everywhere; the spring breathings in the air came scented with the young leaf of trees that had been planted before Blenheim was fought. Suddenly across the farther end of the garden passed a girlish figure in white. Lester's pulses ran. It was Marcia. He saw her but seldom, and that generally at a distance. But sometimes she would come, in her pretty, friendly way, to chat to him about his work, and turn over his manuscripts. "She has the same feeling about me that nice women have about their dogs and cats. They are conscious of them, sorry for them; they don't like them to feel themselves neglected. So she comes to see me every now and then--lest I should think myself forgotten. Her conscience pricks her for people less prosperous than herself. I see it quite plainly. But she would be angry if I were to tell her so!" CHAPTER VII It was a breezy June afternoon, with the young summer at its freshest and lustiest.