as to the
nature of their intimacy. Furley, a son of the people, had the air
of cultivating, even clinging to a certain plebeian strain, never
so apparent as when he spoke, or in his gestures. He was a Member of
Parliament for a Labour constituency, a shrewd and valuable exponent of
the gospel of the working man. What he lacked in the higher qualities
of oratory he made up in sturdy common sense. The will-o'-the-wisp
Socialism of the moment, with its many attendant "isms" and theories,
received scant favour at his hands. He represented the solid element
in British Labour politics, and it was well known that he had refused
a seat in the Cabinet in order to preserve an absolute independence. He
had a remarkable gift of taciturnity, which in a man of his class made
for strength, and it was concerning him that the Prime Minister had made
his famous epigram, that Furley was the Labour man whom he feared the
most and dreaded the least.

Julian Orden, with an exterior more promising in many respects than
that of his friend, could boast of no similar distinctions. He was
the youngest son of a particularly fatuous peer resident in the
neighbourhood, had started life as a barrister, in which profession he
had attained a moderate success, had enjoyed a brief but not inglorious
spell of soldiering, from which he had retired slightly lamed for life,
and had filled up the intervening period in the harmless occupation
of censoring. His friendship with Furley appeared on the surface too
singular to be anything else but accidental. Probably no one save the
two men themselves understood it, and they both possessed the gift of
silence.

"What's all this peace talk mean?" Julian Orden asked, fingering the
stem of his wineglass.

"Who knows?" Furley grunted. "The newspapers must have their daily
sensation."

"I have a theory that it is being engineered."

"Bolo business, eh?"

Julian Orden moved in his place a little uneasily. His long, nervous
fingers played with the stick which stood always by the side of his
chair.

"You don't believe in it, do you?" he asked quietly.

Furley looked straight ahead of him. His eyes seemed caught by the
glitter of the lamplight upon the cut-glass decanter.

"You know my opinion of war, Julian," he said. "It's a filthy,
intolerable heritage from generations of autocratic government. No
democracy ever wanted war. Every democracy needs and desires peace."

"One moment," Julian interrupted. "You