d back the Address.

"It's extraordinarily clever," she remarked. "You are extraordinarily
clever, you know."

"There's nothing in it that isn't pretty obvious," said he, though he
was well pleased.

"Oh, to you, yes, obvious to you; that's just it," she said.

But amongst all that was in the portmanteau there was nothing that could
be construed into a friendly word for the Crusade; and were not the
anxious minds of the Henstead Wesleyans meant to read a disclaimer of
that great movement in a reference to "the laudable and growing activity
of all religious denominations, each within the sphere of its own
action"? Quisante had put in "legitimate" before "sphere," but crossed
it out again; the hint was plain enough without, and a superfluous word
is a word too much. "Sphere," implies limitations; the Crusade had
negatived them. This significant passage in the Address was fresh in
May's mind when, a day or two later, her husband came in, fretful and
out of humour. He flung a note down on the table, saying in a puzzled
tone,

"I can't think what's come over Dick Benyon. You know my fight'll be
over before his is half-way through, and I wrote offering to go and make
a couple of speeches for him. He writes back to say that under existing
circumstances he thinks it'll be better for him not to trouble me. Read
his note; it's very stiff and distant."

"Can you wonder?" was what rose to her lips. She did not put the
question. The odd thing was that most undoubtedly he could wonder and
did wonder, that he did not understand why Dick should be aggrieved nor,
probably, why, even though he chose to be aggrieved, he should therefore
decline assistance of unquestionable value.

"Well, there'll be a lot of people glad to have me," said Quisante in
resentful peevishness. "And I daresay, if I have a big win, he'll change
his mind. I shall be worth having then."

"I don't think that would make any difference to Dick," she said.

She spoke lightly, her tone was void of all offence, but Quisante left
the room, frowning and vexed. She had seemed to rebuke him and to accuse
him of not seeing or not understanding something that was plain to her.
He had become very sensitive on this point. Left to himself, he had been
a self-contented man, quite clear about what he meant to do, troubling
very little about what he was, quite confident that he could reason from
his own mind to the mind of his acquaintances with absolute safety. When
he