"In my judgment, then, it would be best," said Elizabeth, brief interval given up to the enjoyment of a wordless _tête-à-tête_, "to let Patty and Paul be together a little before they part. For this reason--that they _will_ be together, whether they are let or not. Isn't it preferable to make concessions before they are ignominiously extorted from you? And if Patty has much longer to bear seeing her lover, as she thinks, humiliated and insulted, by being ignored as her lover in this house, she will go to the other extreme--she will go away from us to him--by way of making up to him for it. It is like what you say of the smouldering, poverty-bred anarchy in your European national life--that if you don't find a vent for the accumulating electricity generating in the human sewer--how do you put it?--it is no use to try to draw it off after the storm has burst." "Elizabeth," said her husband, reproachfully, "that is worse than being called a hedger and ditcher." "Well, you know what I mean." "Tell me what you mean in the vulgar tongue, my dear. Do you want me to go and call on Mr. Paul Brion and tell him that we have thought better of it?" "Not exactly that. But if you would persuade Mrs. Duff-Scott to be nice about it--no one can be more enchantingly nice than she, when she likes, but when she doesn't like she is enough to drive a man--a proud man like Paul Brion--simply frantic. And Patty will never stand it--she will not hold out--she will not go away leaving things as they are now. We could not expect it of her." "Well? And how should Mrs. Duff-Scott show herself nice to Mr. Brion?" "She might treat him as--as she did you, Kingscote, when you were wanting me." "But she approved of me, you see. She doesn't approve of him." "You are both gentlemen, anyhow--though he is poor. _I_ would have been the more tender and considerate to him, because he is poor. He is not too poor for Patty--nor would he have been if she had no fortune herself. As it is, there is abundance. And, Kingscote, though I don't mean for a moment to disparage you--" "I should hope not, Elizabeth." "Still I can't help thinking that to have brains as he has is to be essentially a rich and distinguished man. And to be a writer for a high-class newspaper, which you say yourself is the greatest and best educator in the world--to spend himself in making other men see what is right and useful--in spreading light and knowledge that no money could pay for, and all the time effacing himself, and taking no reward of honour or credit for it--surely that must be the noblest profession, and one that should make a man anybody's equal--even yours, my love!"