“I have dreamed of woman’s mission, and of woman’s love.  I have fancied that woman and woman’s love represented the ruling spirit, as man and man’s brain represent the moving agent, in the world.  I have drawn pictures of an age in which real chivalry of word and thought and deed might be the only law necessary to control men’s actions.  Not the scenic and theatrical chivalry of the middle age, ready at any moment to break out into epidemic crime, but a true reverence and understanding of woman’s supreme right to honour and consideration; an age wherein it should be no longer coarsely said that love is but an episode in the brutal life of man, while to woman it is life itself.  I have dreamed that the eternal womanhood of the universe beckoned me to follow.”

The Countess could not take her eyes off Claudius.  She had never met a man like him; at least she had never met a man who plunged into this kind of talk after half an hour’s acquaintance.  There was a thrill of feeling in her smooth deep voice when she answered:  “If all men thought as you think, the world would be a very different place.”

“It would he a better place in more ways than one,” he replied.

“And yet you yourself call it a dream,” said Margaret, musing.

“It is only you, Countess, who say that dreams are never realised.”

“And do you expect to realise yours?”

“Yes—­I do.”  He looked at her with his bold blue eyes, and she thought they sparkled.

“Tell me,” she asked, “are you going to preach a crusade for the liberation of our sex?  Do you mean to bring about the great change in the social relations of the world?  Is it you who will build up the pedestal which we are to mount and from which we shall survey countless ranks of adoring men?”

“Do you not see, as you look down on me from your throne, from this chair, that I have begun already?” answered Claudius, smiling, and making a pretence of folding his hands.

“No,” said the Countess, overlooking his last speech; “if you had any convictions about it, as you pretend to have, you would begin at once and revolutionise the world in six months.  What is the use of dreaming?  It is not dreamers who make history.”

“No, it is more often women.  But tell me, Countess, do you approve of my crusade?  Am I not right?  Have I your sanction?”

Margaret was silent.  Mr. Barker’s voice was heard again, holding forth to Miss Skeat.

“In all ages,” he said, with an air of conviction, “the aristocracy of a country have been in reality the leaders of its thought and science and enlightenment.  Perhaps the form of aristocracy most worthy of admiration is that time-honoured institution of pre-eminent families, the Scottish clan, the Hebrew tribe—­”

Claudius overheard and opened his eyes.  It seemed to him that Barker was talking nonsense.  Margaret smiled, for she knew her companion well, and understood in a moment that the American had discovered her hobby, and was either seeking to win her good graces, or endeavouring to amuse himself by inducing her to air her views.  But Claudius returned to the charge.