y, and in their insisting upon treating with
the weak Labour Party in Germany."

"I agree with the Bishop," Julian pronounced. "The unclassified
democracy of our country may believe itself hardly treated, but
individually it is intensely patriotic. I do not believe that its
leaders would force the hand of the country towards peace, unless they
received full assurance that their confreres in Germany were able to
assume a dominant place in the government of that country--a place at
least equal to the influence of the democracy here."

Doctor Lennard glanced at the speaker a little curiously. He had known
Julian since he was a boy but had never regarded him as anything but a
dilettante.

"You may not know it," he said, "but you are practically expounding
the views of that extraordinary writer of whom we were speaking--Paul
Fiske."

"I have been told," the Bishop remarked, cracking a walnut, "that Paul
Fiske is the pseudonym of a Cabinet Minister."

"And I," Hannaway Wells retorted, "have been informed most credibly that
he is a Church of England clergyman."

"The last rumour I heard," Lord Shervinton put in, "was that he is a
grocer in a small way of business at Wigan."

"Dear me!" Doctor Lennard remarked. "The gossips have covered enough
ground! A man at a Bohemian club of which I am a member--the Savage
Club, in fact--assured me that he was an opium drugged journalist, kept
alive by the charity of a few friends; a human wreck, who was once the
editor of an important London paper."

"You have some slight connection with journalism, have you not, Julian?"
the Earl asked his son condescendingly. "Have you heard no reports?"

"Many," Julian replied, "but none which I have been disposed to credit.
I should imagine, myself, that Paul Fiske is a man who believes, having
created a public, that his written words find an added value from the
fact that he obviously desires neither reward nor recognition; just in
the same way as the really earnest democrats of twenty years ago scoffed
at the idea of a seat in Parliament, or of breaking bread in any way
with the enemy."

"It was a fine spirit, that," the Bishop declared. "I am not sure that
we are not all of us a little over-inclined towards compromises. The
sapping away of conscience is so easy."

The dining-room door was thrown open, and the butler announced a
visitor.

"Colonel Henderson, your lordship."

They all turned around in their places. The colonel, a fine