Maraton sipped his wine thoughtfully.

“But for your overweening humility, Selingman,” he began—­

Selingman struck the table with his fist.

“It is a night for rejoicings, this,” he thundered.  “I will not have my weaknesses exposed.  Let us, for to-night, at any rate, see the best in each other.  Glance, for instance, at Miss Julia.  Admire the exquisite pink of my carnations which she has condescended to wear; see how well they become her.”

“I feel like a flower shop,” Julia laughed.

“And you look like the spirit of the flowers herself,” Selingman declared, “the wonderful Power on the other side of the sun, who draws them out of the ground and touches their petals with colour, shakes perfume into their blossoms and makes this England of yours, in springtime, like a beautiful, sweet-smelling carpet.”

“Don’t listen to him, Julia,” Maraton warned her.  “It was only a month ago that he told me that no civilised man should live in this country because of the women and the beer.”

“A man changes,” Selingman insisted fiercely.  “Your beer I will never drink, but Miss Julia knows that she hasn’t in the world a slave so abject as I.”

Maraton rose to his feet.

“I must go,” he announced.  “I have to talk with Mr. Foley for a few minutes.  You had better come with me, Aaron.  Selingman will see Julia back.”

They watched him depart.  Julia sighed as he passed through the door.

“I can read your thoughts,” Selingman said quickly.  “You are feeling, are you not, that to-night his leaving us has in it something allegorical.  He was made for the storms of life, to fight in them and rejoice in them, and Fate has taken him by the hand and is leading him now towards the quieter places.”

“It is not his choice,” Julia murmured.  “It is destiny.”

“Can’t you look a little way into the future?” Selingman continued, peering through half-closed eyes into his wine glass.  “He represents the only possible link between the only possible political party of this country and the people.  He will win for them in twelve months what they might have waited for through many weary years.  He will sit in the high places.  History will speak well of him.  I will wager you half a dozen pairs of gloves that within a week the Daily Oracle will call him the modern Rienzi.  And yet, with the end of the struggle, with the end of the fierce fighting, comes something—­what is it?—­disappointment?  We have no right to be disappointed, and yet, somehow, one feels that it is the cold and the storm and the wind which keep the best in us—­the fighting best—­alive.”

Julia’s eyes were soft, for a moment, with tears.  She, too, was following him a little way into the future.

“They will make a politician of him,” she sighed.  “So much the better for politics.  But there is one thing which I do not think that he will ever forget.  So long as he lives he will be a people’s man.”