w up the chair
himself. "I'm afraid," said Paul, "I've been a sad trespasser on your
hospitality. Miss Winwood must have told you it has scarcely been my
fault; but I don't know how to express my thanks."

As Paul made it, the little speech could not have been better. Colonel
Winwood, who (like the seniors of every age) deplored the lack of
manners of the rising generation, was pleased by the ever so little
elaborate courtesy.

"I'm only too glad we've pulled you round. You've had a bad time, I
hear."

Paul smiled. "Pretty bad. If it hadn't been for Miss Winwood and all
she has done for me, I should have pegged out."

"My sister's a notable woman," said the Colonel. "When she sets out to
do a thing she does it thoroughly."

"I owe her my life," said Paul simply.

There was a pause. The two men, both bright-eyed, looked at each other
for the fraction of a second. One, the aristocrat secure of his wealth,
of his position, of himself, with no illusion left him save pride of
birth, no dream save that of an England mighty and prosperous under
continuous centuries of Tory rule, no memories but of stainless
honour--he had fought gallantly for his Queen, he had lived like a
noble gentleman, he had done his country disinterested service--no
ambition but to keep himself on the level of the ideal which he had
long since attained; the other the creation of nothing but of dreams,
the child of the gutter, the adventurer, the vagabond, with no address,
not even a back room over a sweetstuff shop in wide England, the
possessor of a few suits of old clothes and one pound, one shilling and
a penny, with nothing in front of him but the vast blankness of 'life,
nothing behind him save memories of sordid struggle, with nothing to
guide him, nothing to set him on his way with thrilling pulse and
quivering fibres save the Vision Splendid, the glorious Hope, the
unconquerable Faith. In the older man's eyes Paul read the calm, stern
certainty of things both born to and achieved; and Colonel Winwood saw
in the young man's eyes, as in a glass darkly, the reflection of the
Vision.

"And yours is a very young life," said he. "Gad! it must be wonderful
to be twenty. 'Rich in the glory of my rising sun.' You know your
Thackeray?"

"'Riche de ma jeunesse,'" laughed Paul. "Thackeray went one better than
Beranger, that time."

"I forgot," said Colonel Winwood. "My sister told me. You go about with
Beranger as a sort of pocket Bible."

Pau