istible force. In a
few years there would be Parliament, office, power, the awaking from
stupor of an England hypnotized by malign influences. He saw himself at
the table in the now familiar House of green benches, thundering out an
Empire's salvation. If he thought more of the awakener than the
awakening, it was because he was the same little Paul Kegworthy to whom
the cornelian heart had brought the Vision Splendid in the scullery of
the Bludston slum. The cornelian heart still lay in his waistcoat
pocket at the end of his watch chain. He also held a real princess's
letter in his hand.

A tap at the door aroused him from his day-dream.

There entered a self-effacing young woman with pencil and notebook.
"Are you ready for me, sir?"

"Not quite. Sit down for a minute, Miss Smithers. Or, come up to the
table if you don't mind, and help me open these envelopes."

Paul, you see, was a great man, who commanded the services of a
shorthand typist.

To the mass of correspondence then opened and read he added that which
he had brought in from Colonel and Miss Winwood. From this he sorted
the few letters which it would be necessary to answer in his own
handwriting, and laid them aside; then taking the great bulk, he
planted himself on the hearthrug, with his back to the fire, and,
cigarette in mouth, dictated to the self-effacing young woman. She took
down his words with anxious humility, for she looked upon him as a god
sphered on Olympian heights--and what socially insecure young woman of
lower-middle-class England could do otherwise in the presence of a
torturingly beautiful youth, immaculately raimented, who commanded in
the great house with a smile more royal and debonair than that of the
master thereof, Member of Parliament though he was, and Justice of the
Peace and Lord of the Manor? And Paul, fresh from his retrospect,
looked at the girl's thin shoulders and sharp, intent profile, and
wondered a little, somewhat ironically. He knew that she regarded him
as a kind of god, for reasons of caste. Yet she was the daughter of a
Morebury piano tuner, of unblemished parentage for generations. She had
never known hunger and cold and the real sting of poverty. Miss Winwood
herself knew more of drunken squalor. He saw himself a ragged and
unwashed urchin, his appalling breeches supported by one brace,
addressing her in familiar terms; and he saw her transfigured air of
lofty disgust; whereupon he laughed aloud in the middle