“He is a humanitarian?”

“And a great believer.”

“In man?”

“In the good that is in man.  I often think at the back of his mind, or heart, he believes that the act of belief is almost an act of creation.”

“You mean, for instance, that if you believe in a man’s truthfulness you make him a truthful man?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Doctor Isaacson,” said Lady O’Ryan, “do introduce Mr. Armine to my husband, and make him believe my husband is a miser instead of a spendthrift.  It would be such a mercy to the family.  We might begin to pay off the mortgage on the castle.”

The conversation took a frivolous turn, and died in laughter.

But towards the end of dinner Mrs. Derringham again spoke of Nigel Armine, asking: 

“And what does Mr. Armine do now?”

“He went to Egypt after he let his place, bought some land there, in the Fayyum, I believe, and has been living on it a good deal.  I think he has been making some experiments in farming.”

“And does he believe in the truth and honesty of the average donkey-boy?”

“I don’t know.  But I must confess I have heard him extol the merits of the Bedouins.”

At this moment Lady Somerson sprang up, in her usual feverish manner, and the men in a moment were left to themselves.  As the sliding doors closed behind Lady Somerson’s active back, there was a hesitating movement among them, suggestive of a half-formed desire for rearrangement.

Then Armine came decisively away from his place on the far side of the long table, and joined Meyer Isaacson.

“I’m glad to meet you again, Isaacson,” he said, grasping the Doctor’s hand.

The Doctor returned his grip with a characteristic clasp, and they sat down side by side, while the other men began talking and lighting cigarettes.

“Have you only just come back?” asked the Doctor.

“I have been back for a week.”

“So long!  Where are you staying?”

“At the Savoy.”

“The Savoy?”

“Are you surprised!”

The Doctor’s brilliant eyes were fixed upon Armine with an expression half humorous, half affectionate.

“Any smart hotel would seem the wrong place for you,” he said.  “I can see you on the snows of the Alps, or your own moors at Etchingham, even at—­where is it?”

“Sennoures.”

“But at the Savoy, the Ritz, the Carlton—­no.  Their gilded banality isn’t the cadre for you at all.”

“I’m very happy at the Savoy,” Armine replied.

As he spoke, he looked away from Meyer Isaacson across the table to the wall opposite to him.  Upon it hung a large reproduction of Watts’s picture, “Progress.”  He gazed at it, and his face became set in a strange calm, as if he had for a moment forgotten the place he was in, the people round about him.  Meyer Isaacson watched him with a concentrated interest.  There was something