"Because it is a copy of a good picture of a glorious King," replied Aurelian. "A good _King_!" "A glorious King and most noble man." "You talk like a Jacobite." "I _am_ a Jacobite." McCann took his pipe out of his mouth. "What do you talk like that for? You used to be a socialist." "I am still a socialist." "Are you bedevilled with Wentworth's theory that a man can be both a socialist and a royalist?" "Certainly." "How do you justify such nonsense?" "By regarding both sides of the shield." "I deny that socialism is one side of a shield, the other side of which is monarchism." "Then you should study history more carefully," interrupted Wentworth. "Will history prove to me that monarchism is not and has not been from the first the bitter enemy of the people?" cried the agitator, derisively, flashing his eyes savagely on the languid Wentworth. "That is exactly what it will prove," returned his tormentor, sweetly. "Well, I have studied history for twenty years, and it has taught me exactly the reverse." "_Histories_, you mean; but you must remember that there is very little history in histories." McCann gasped in impotent rage, but Aurelian interposed with his low voice. "You will reach nothing by such argument, my children. You are both visionaries,--you, Malcolm, who dream of ideal, impossible republics surrounded by the tottering ruins of your fantastic fabrics, builded on the shifting sand of popular fancies; you, Strafford Wentworth, dear dupe of futile hopes, vainly watching for the King to come to his own again. Dreamers both of you! I alone am the practical man; I wait for that which the gods may give. In the mean time I stand with the 'divine Plato,' aside, under the wall, while the storm of dust goes by. Forsake your forlorn hope, Malcolm; stand to one side with me, and wait. And in the mean time"--he lifted a strange Japanese viol--"in the mean time, sing, and forget the imminent night. Malcolm, there is beauty still left, and a little art; it will last us through the twilight." "Art will not quiet my conscience, nor blind my eyes to the sight of rotting slaves and foul fat drivers." "You take things too seriously!" cried Wentworth, biting the heavy leaves one by one from a drooping rose. "It is like putting new wine into old bottles to try to pour seriousness into this decrepit and degenerate age." McCann laughed aloud. "I accept the omen; for the bottles, if I remember aright, were burst!" "And you will spill your wine." "The type of blood; and the blood of martyrs is the seed of the new Commonwealth!" "But why not take new bottles and save your precious wine?" "We have none, and the old are at hand." "They are rotting fast." "The world cannot wait,--mothers and children starve every day." "If you die for them it is only a life for a life, and the guilty thrive." "Some will go down with us to hades!"