“Leslie,” he said, “you speak like a prophet, but believe me, my mind is made up.  I have taken root here.  Such work as I can do from my study is, as it always has been, at your service.  But I myself have finished with actual political life.  Don’t press me too hard.  I must seem churlish and ungrateful, but if I listened to you for hours the result would be the same.  I have finished with actual political life.”

Borrowdean shrugged his shoulders despairingly.  Such a man was hard to deal with.

“Mannering,” he protested, “you must not, you really must not, send me away like this.  You speak of your written work.  Don’t think that I underestimate it because I have not alluded to it before.  I myself honestly believe that it was those wonderful articles of yours in the Nineteenth Century which brought back to a reasonable frame of mind thousands who were half led away by the glamour of this new campaign.  You kindled the torch, my friend, and you must bear it to victory.  You bring me to my last resource.  If you will not serve under Rochester, come back—­and Rochester will serve under you when the time comes.”

Mannering shook his head slowly.

“I wish I could convince you,” he said, “once and for all, that my refusal springs from no such reasons as you seem to imagine.  I would sooner sit here, with a volume of Pater or Meredith, and this west wind blowing in my face, than I would hear myself acclaimed Prime Minister of England.  Let us abandon this discussion once and for all, Borrowdean.  We have arrived at a cul-de-sac, and I have spoken my last word.”

Borrowdean threw his half-finished cigarette into the ever-widening creek below.  It was characteristic of the man that his face showed no sign of disappointment.  Only for several moments he kept silence.

“Come,” Mannering said at last.  “Let us make our way back to the house.  If you are resolved to get back to town to-night, we ought to be thinking about luncheon.”

“Thank you,” Borrowdean said.  “I must return.”

They started to walk inland, but they had taken only a few steps when they both, as though by a common impulse, stopped.  An unfamiliar sound had broken in upon the deep silence of this quiet land.  Borrowdean, who was a few paces ahead, pointed to the bend in the road below, and turned towards his companion with a little gesture of cynical amusement.

“Behold,” he exclaimed, “the invasion of modernity.  Even your time-forgotten paradise, Mannering, has its civilizations, then.  What an anachronism!”

With a cloud of dust behind, and with the sun flashing upon its polished metal parts, a motor car swung into sight, and came rushing towards them.  Borrowdean, always a keen observer of trifles, noticed the change in Mannering’s face.

“It is a neighbour of mine,” he remarked.  “She is on her way to the golf links.”

“Golf links!” Borrowdean exclaimed.