Lacrima uttered no word, but looked sadly away, over the fair landscape. In her heart, in spite of her detestation of the man, she felt a strange fantastic sympathy with a good deal of what he said. Women, especially women of Latin races, have no great respect for democratic sentiments when they do not issue in definite deeds. Her private idea of a revolutionary leader was something very far removed from the voluble local candidate, and she had suffered too much herself from the frail petulance of Maurice Quincunx not to feel a secret longing that somewhere, somehow, this aggressive tyrant should be faced by a strength as firm, as capable, as fearless, as his own. Mr. Romer, with his swarthy imperial face and powerful figure, seemed to her, as he leant against the tree, so to impress himself upon that yielding landscape, that there appeared reason enough for his complaint that he could find no antagonist worthy of his steel. In the true manner of a Pariah, who turns, with swift contempt, upon her own class, the girl was conscious of a rising tide of revolt in her heart against the incompetent weakness of her friend. What would she not give to be able, even once, to see this man outfaced and outwitted! She was impressed too, poor girl, as she shrank silently aside from his sarcasm, by the horrible indifference of these charming sunlit fields to the brutality of the man’s challenge. They cared nothing--nothing! It was impossible to make them care. Hundreds of years ago they had slumbered, just as dreamily, just as indifferently, as they did now. If even at this moment she were to plunge a knife into the man’s heart, so that he fell a mass of senseless clay at her feet, that impervious wood-pigeon would go on murmuring its monotonous ditty, just as peacefully, just as serenely! There was something really terrifying to her in this callous indifference of Nature. It was like living perpetually in close contact with a person who was deaf and dumb and blind; and who, while the most tragic events were being transacted, went on cheerfully and imperturbably humming some merry tune. It would be almost better, thought the girl, if that tree-trunk against which the quarry-owner pressed his heavy hand were really in league with him. Anything were better than this smiling indifference which seemed to keep on repeating in a voice as monotonous as the pigeon’s--“Everything is permitted. Nothing is forbidden. Nothing is forbidden. Everything is permitted.” like the silly reiterated whirring of some monstrous placid shuttle. It was strange, the rebellious inconsistent thoughts, which passed through her mind! She wondered why Hugh Clavering was thus to be waylaid and persuaded. Had he dared to rise in genuine opposition? No, she did not believe it. He had probably talked religion, just as Maurice talked anarchy and Wone talked socialism. It was all talk! Romer was quite right. They had no spirit in them, these English people. She thought of the fierce