George then understood the situation.  Mr. Prince, through the hazard of a visit to Chelsea Town Hall, had become obsessed by a single idea, an idea which his natural apprehensions had well nourished.  A common phenomenon!  George had met before the man obsessed by one idea, with his crude reasoning, his impatience, and his flashing eye.  As for himself he did not pretend to be an expert in politics; he had no time for politics; but he was interested in them, and held strong views about them; and among his strongest views was the view that the crudity of the average imperialist was noxious, and a source of real danger.  ’That man ought to be shot.’  Imagine such a remark!  He felt that he must soothe Mr. Prince as he would soothe a child.  And he did so, with all the tact acquired at municipal committee meetings in the north.

His, last impression, on departure, was that Mr. Prince was an excellent and most lovable fellow, despite his obsession.  “Glad to see you at any time,” said Mr. Prince, with genuine cordiality, critically and somewhat inimically assessing the car, which he referred to as ‘she.’  Marguerite had remained in the studio.  She was wonderful.  She admired her husband too simply, and she was too content, but she had marvellous qualities of naturalness, common sense in demeanour, realism, and placidity.  Thanks to her remarkable instinct for taking things for granted, the interview had been totally immune from constraint.  It was difficult, and she had made it seem easy.  No fuss, no false sentiment!  And she looked very nice, very interesting, quite attractive, in her mourning and in her expectancy.  A fine couple.  Unassuming of course, narrow, opinionated—­(he surmised that the last days of the late Mr. Haim had been disciplined)—­but no fools either, and fundamentally decent.  While condescending to them, he somehow envied them.  But he knew what the opinion of Lois about them would be!

IV

After a period of shallow sleep he woke up in the morning factitiously refreshed as the train was rumbling slowly over the high-level bridge.  The sun blinked full in his eyes when he looked out through the trellis-work of the bridge.  Far below, the river was tinged with the pale blue of the sky.  Big ships lay in the river as if they had never moved and never could move; a steamer in process of painting, with her sides lifted above the water, gleamed in irregular patches of brilliant scarlet.  A lively tug passed down-stream, proud of her early rising; and, smaller even than the tug, a smack, running close-hauled, bowed to the puffs of the light breeze.  Farther away the lofty chimneys sent their scarves of smoke into the air, and the vast skeletons of incipient vessels could be descried through webs of staging.  The translucent freshness of the calm scene was miraculous; it divinely intoxicated the soul, and left no squalor and no ugliness anywhere.