s, who turned their eyes on him with a
negligent stare as if their lives were too remote to permit them to take
interest in this passing man at ease.

CHAPTER IV

At Monkland, that same hour, in the little whitewashed
'withdrawing-room' of a thatched, whitewashed cottage, two men sat
talking, one on either side of the hearth; and in a low chair between
them a dark-eyed woman leaned back, watching, the tips of her delicate
thin fingers pressed together, or held out transparent towards the fire.
A log, dropping now and then, turned up its glowing underside; and the
firelight and the lamplight seemed so to have soaked into the white
walls that a wan warmth exuded. Silvery dun moths, fluttering in from
the dark garden, kept vibrating, like spun shillings, over a jade-green
bowl of crimson roses; and there was a scent, as ever in that old
thatched cottage, of woodsmoke, flowers, and sweetbriar.

The man on the left was perhaps forty, rather above middle height,
vigorous, active, straight, with blue eyes and a sanguine face that
glowed on small provocation. His hair was very bright, almost red, and
his fiery moustaches which descended to the level of his chin, like Don
Quixote's seemed bristling and charging.

The man on the right was nearer thirty, evidently tall, wiry, and very
thin. He sat rather crumpled, in his low armchair, with hands clasped
round a knee; and a little crucified smile haunted the lips of his lean
face, which, with its parchmenty, tanned, shaven cheeks, and deep-set,
very living eyes, had a certain beauty.

These two men, so extravagantly unlike, looked at each other like
neighbouring dogs, who, having long decided that they are better apart,
suddenly find that they have met at some spot where they cannot possibly
have a fight. And the woman watched; the owner, as it were, of one, but
who, from sheer love of dogs, had always stroked and patted the other.

"So, Mr. Courtier," said the younger man, whose dry, ironic voice, like
his smile, seemed defending the fervid spirit in his eyes; "all you say
only amounts, you see, to a defence of the so-called Liberal spirit;
and, forgive my candour, that spirit, being an importation from the
realms of philosophy and art, withers the moment it touches practical
affairs."

The man with the red moustaches laughed; the sound was queer--at once so
genial and so sardonic.

"Well put!" he said: "And far be it from me to gainsay. But since
compromise is the