When the singing and the cheering and the toasting was over, they all sat on and talked and smoked till late. Eddy talked too. And under his talking his perceptions were keenly working. The vivid, alive personalities of all these people, these widely differing men and women, boys and girls, struck sharply on his consciousness. There were vast differences between them, yet in nearly all was a certain fine, vigorous effectiveness, a power of achieving, getting something done. They all had their weapons, and used them in the battles of the world. They all, artists and philosophers, journalists and politicians, poets and priests, workers among the poor, players among the rich, knew what they would be at, where they thought they were going and how, and what they were up against. They made their choices; they selected, preferred, rejected ... hated.... The sharp, hard word brought him up. That was it; they hated. They all, probably, hated something or other. Even the tolerant, large-minded Billy, even the gentle Jane, hated what they considered bad literature, bad art. They not only sought good, but eschewed evil; if they had not realised the bad, the word “good” would have been meaningless to them. With everyone in the room it was the same. Blake Connolly hated the Union--that was why he could be the force for Nationalism that he was; John Macleod, the Ulsterman, hated Nationalists and Papists--that was why he spoke so well on platforms for the Union; Bob Traherne hated capitalism--that was why he could fight so effectively for the economic betterment that he believed in; Nevill Bellairs hated Liberalism--that was why he got in at elections; the vicar of St. Gregory’s hated disregard of moral laws--that was why he was a potent force for their observance among his parishioners; Hillier hated agnosticism--that was why he could tell his people without flinching that they would go to hell if they didn’t belong to the Church; (he also, Eddy remembered, hated some writers of plays--and that, no doubt, was why he looked at Cecil Le Moine as he did;) Cecil Le Moine hated the commonplace and the stupid--that was why he never lapsed into either in his plays; Mrs. Crawford hated errors of breeding (such as discordant clothes, elopements, incendiarism, and other vulgar violence)--that was why her house was so select; Bridget Hogan hated being bored--that was why she succeeded in finding life consistently amusing; James Peters hated men of his own class without collars, men of any class without backbones, as well as lies, unwholesomeness, and all morbid rot--that was probably why his short, unsubtle, boyish sermons had a force, a driving-power, that made them tell, and why the men and boys he worked and played with loved him. And Arnold, who was not there but ought to have been, had hated many things, and that was why he wasn’t there.