“It is very good of you to let me come, sir.”

Why, the girl was blind.  This was a man, a fine, up-standing fellow, with a clean-cut, sensitive face, and honest, almost beautiful eyes.  How did women judge men, anyhow?

And, try as he would, Howard Cardew could find no fault with Willy Cameron that night.  He tried him out on a number of things.  In religion, for instance, he was orthodox, although he felt that the church had not come up fully during the war.

“Religion isn’t a matter only of churches any more,” said Mr. Cameron.  “It has to go out into the streets, I think, sir.  It’s a-well, Christ left the tabernacle, you remember.”

That was all right.  Howard felt that himself sometimes.  He was a vestryman at Saint Peter’s, and although he felt very devout during the service, especially during the offertory, when the music filled the fine old building, he was often conscious that he shed his spirituality at the door, when he glanced at the sky to see what were the prospects for an afternoon’s golf.

In politics Willy Cameron was less satisfactory.

“I haven’t decided, yet,” he said.  “I voted for Mr. Wilson in 1916, but although I suppose parties are necessary, I don’t like to feel that I am party-bound.  Anyhow, the old party lines are gone.  I rather look—­”

He stopped.  That terrible speech of Edith Boyd’s still rankled.

“Go on, Willy,” said Lily.  “I told them they’d love to you talk.”

“That’s really all, sir,” said Willy Cameron, unhappily.  “I am a Scot, and to start a Scot on reform is fatal.”

“Ah, you believe in reform?”

“We are not doing very well as we are, sir.”

“I should like extremely to know how you feel about things,” said Howard, gravely.

“Only this:  So long as one party is, or is considered, the representative of capital, the vested interests, and the other of labor, the great mass of the people who are neither the one nor the other cannot be adequately represented.”

“And the solution?”

“Perhaps a new party.  Or better still, a liberalizing of the Republican.”

“Before long,” said Lily suddenly, “there will be no state.  There will be enough for everybody, and nobody will have too much.”

Howard smiled at her indulgently.

“How do you expect to accomplish this ideal condition?”

“That’s the difficulty about it,” said Lily, thoughtfully.  “It means a revolution.  It would be peaceful, though.  The thing to do is to convince people that it is simple justice, and then they will divide what they have.”

“Why, Lily!” Grace’s voice was anxious.  “That’s Socialism.”

But Howard only smiled tolerantly, and changed the subject.  Every one had these attacks of idealism in youth.  They were the exaggerated altruism of adolescence; a part of its dreams and aspirations.  He changed the subject.