So that he saw it all sub specie aeternitatis, as a matter not of economic theory, but rather of religion.  Raeburn, as they talked, shrank in dismay from the burning intensity of mood underlying his controlled speech.  He spoke, for instance, of Bennett’s conversion to Harry Wharton’s proposed bill, or of the land nationalising scheme he was spending all his slender stores of breath and strength in attacking, not with anger or contempt, but with, a passionate sorrow which seemed to Raeburn preposterous! intolerable!—­to be exhausting in him the very springs and sources of a too precarious life.  There rose in Aldous at last an indignant protest which yet could hardly find itself words.  What help to have softened the edge and fury of religious war, only to discover new antagonisms of opinion as capable of devastating heart and affections as any homoousion of old?  Had they not already cost him love?  Were they also, in another fashion, to cost him his friend?

* * * * *

“Ah, dear old fellow—­enough!” said Hallin at last—­“take me back to Italy!  You have told me so little—­such a niggardly little!”

“I told you that we went and I came back in a water-spout,” said Aldous; “the first rain in Northern Italy for four months—­worse luck!  ’Rain at Reggio, rain at Parma.—­At Lodi rain, Piacenza rain!’—­that might about stand for my diary, except for one radiant day when my aunt, Betty Macdonald, and I descended on Milan, and climbed the Duomo.”

“Did Miss Betty amuse you?”

Aldous laughed.

“Well, at least she varied the programme.  The greater part of our day in Milan Aunt Neta and I spent in rushing after her like its tail after a kite.  First of all, she left us in the Duomo Square, running like a deer, and presently, to Aunt Neta’s horror, we discovered that she was pursuing a young Italian officer in a blue cloak.  When we came up with the pair she was inquiring, in her best Italian, where the ‘Signor’ got his cloak, because positively she must have one like it, and he, cap in hand, was explaining to the Signorina that if she would but follow him round the corner to his military tailor’s, she could be supplied on the spot.  So there we all went, Miss Betty insisting.  You can imagine Aunt Neta.  She bought a small shipload of stuff—­and then positively skipped for joy in the street outside—­the amazed officer looking on.  And as for her career over the roof of the Duomo—­the agitation of it nearly brought my aunt to destruction—­and even I heaved a sigh of relief when I got them both down safe.”

“Is the creature all tricks?” said Hallin, with a smile.  “As you talk of her to me I get the notion of a little monkey just cut loose from a barrel organ.”