While the hoarse company were having their glasses justifiably refilled, Margery Byrne came quickly up to her husband, and gave him the look which means to a husband, "I want to go home now." She was tired and she looked tired; and she was going to have a baby. Stephen said, "Right you are, my dear--just a minute." He was talking now to the Reverend Peter and Muriel Tarrant, who was prettily flushed and a little excited. He was arguing with the Reverend Peter about the poetry of John Donne. He, too, was excited and pleased and reluctant to go home. But he knew that Margery ought to go home. And of such stuff are the real temptations of man. He looked an apology and an appeal at his wife and said, "One minute, my dear.... Would you mind?" knowing well that she minded. Mrs. Byrne said that of course she did not mind, and went back to her seat by the dramatic critic, yawning furtively. So Stephen stood against the piano and defended John Donne, that strange Elizabethan mixture of piety and paganism and poetry and nastiness. He had forgotten Mr. Asquith now; he had forgotten the Choir and Muriel Tarrant, and he was absorbed in the serious pronouncement of an artistic belief. The Reverend Peter said that he was no prig, but some of John Donne was too much for him. He could not believe in the essential greatness of a grown man who could write such stuff. Stephen began to quote a line or two from memory; then he reached up for an old brown volume on one of Whittaker's shelves and read from it in a low voice that only the clergyman could hear. "This is what I make of him," he said. And he began to talk. He talked with the real eloquence of a master of words profoundly moved, with growing earnestness and vigour. He spoke of the eternal contradictions of human personality, of the amazing mixtures which make up men; how true was the saying of Samuel Butler that everything a man does is in a measure a picture of himself, yet how true it was that one could not confidently judge what a man was like from what he wrote. He told the Reverend Peter that he was narrow in his estimate--unjust. One must strike a balance. Many of the company had gathered about him now, and were listening; Stephen saw this at last, and finished. Then the Reverend Peter laid a large hand affectionately on his shoulder and said, "You're a wonderful man, Stephen. I surrender. I dare say I've wronged the fellow.... I'll read him again.... You poets are certainly an odd mixture." And that was the thought of all those who had heard the singing and listened to the talk. Stephen turned from him with a curious smile and saw suddenly the reproachful figure of his wife. He said, "Come along, my dear--I'm so sorry! Are you coming, John?" Egerton looked across at Muriel Tarrant and her mother. They were entangled with Mrs. Ambrose and showed no signs of escaping. He said, "No--I shall stay a little, I think."