“Oh, it’s not only that,” she said, with a little smile and a cast of the eye to me.  “But you’ve got to make way for the future.”

Churchill’s face changed suddenly.  He looked rather old, and grey, and wintry, even a little frail.  I understood what she was proving to me, and I rather disliked her for it.  It seemed wantonly cruel to remind a man of what he was trying to forget.

“Ah, yes,” he said, with the gentle sadness of quite an old man, “I dare say there is more in that than you think.  Even you will have to learn.”

“But not for a long time,” she interrupted audaciously.

“I hope not,” he answered, “I hope not.”  She nodded and glided away.

We resumed the road in silence.  Mr. Churchill smiled at his own thoughts once or twice.

“A most amusing ...” he said at last.  “She does me a great deal of good, a great deal.”

I think he meant that she distracted his thoughts.

“Does she always talk like that?” I asked.  He had hardly spoken to me, and I felt as if I were interrupting a reverie—­but I wanted to know.

“I should say she did,” he answered; “I should say so.  But Miss Churchill says that she has a real genius for organization.  She used to see a good deal of them, before they went to Paris, you know.”

“What are they doing there?” It was as if I were extracting secrets from a sleep-walker.

“Oh, they have a kind of a meeting place, for all kinds of Legitimist pretenders—­French and Spanish, and that sort of thing.  I believe Mrs. Granger takes it very seriously.”  He looked at me suddenly.  “But you ought to know more about it than I do,” he said.

“Oh, we see very little of each other,” I answered, “you could hardly call us brother and sister.”

“Oh, I see,” he answered.  I don’t know what he saw.  For myself, I saw nothing.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I succeeded in giving Fox what his journal wanted; I got the atmosphere of Churchill and his house, in a way that satisfied the people for whom it was meant.  His house was a pleasant enough place, of the sort where they do you well, but not nauseously well.  It stood in a tranquil countryside, and stood there modestly.  Architecturally speaking, it was gently commonplace; one got used to it and liked it.  And Churchill himself, when one had become accustomed to his manner, one liked very well—­very well indeed.  He had a dainty, dilettante mind, delicately balanced, with strong limitations, a fantastic temperament for a person in his walk of life—­but sane, mind you, persistent.  After a time, I amused myself with a theory that his heart was not in his work, that circumstance had driven him into the career of politics and ironical fate set him at its head.  For myself, I had an intense contempt for the political mind, and it struck me that he had some of the same feeling.  He had little personal quaintnesses, too, a deference, a modesty, an open-mindedness.