Michael paused a moment in his sermon, and beat out the ashes from his pipe against the grate.

“Anyhow the chance is too remote,” he said.  “All the nations with armies and navies are too much afraid of each other to do more than growl.  Also I happen to want to do something different with my life, and you can’t do anything unless you believe in what you are doing.  I want to leave behind me something more than the portrait of a tin soldier in the dining-room at Ashbridge.  After all, isn’t an artistic profession the greatest there is?  For what counts, what is of value in the world to-day?  Greek statues, the Italian pictures, the symphonies of Beethoven, the plays of Shakespeare.  The people who have made beautiful things are they who are the benefactors of mankind.  At least, so the people who love beautiful things think.”

Francis glanced at his cousin.  He knew this interesting vital side of Michael; he was aware, too, that had anybody except himself been in the room, Michael could not have shown it.  Perhaps there might be people to whom he could show it but certainly they were not those among whom Michael’s life was passed.

“Go on,” he said encouragingly.  “You’re ripping, Mike.”

“Well, the nuisance of it is that the things I am ripping about appear to father to be a sort of indoor game.  It’s all right to play the piano, if it’s too wet to play golf.  You can amuse yourself with painting if there aren’t any pheasants to shoot.  In fact, he will think that my wanting to become a musician is much the same thing as if I wanted to become a billiard-marker.  And if he and I talked about it till we were a hundred years old, he could never possibly appreciate my point of view.”

Michael got up and began walking up and down the room with his slow, ponderous movement.

“Francis, it’s a thousand pities that you and I can’t change places,” he said.  “You are exactly the son father would like to have, and I should so much prefer being his nephew.  However, you come next; that’s one comfort.”

He paused a moment.

“You see, the fact is that he doesn’t like me,” he said.  “He has no sympathy whatever with my tastes, nor with what I am.  I’m an awful trial to him, and I don’t see how to help it.  It’s pure waste of time, my going on in the Guards.  I do it badly, and I hate it.  Now, you’re made for it; you’re that sort, and that sort is my father’s sort.  But I’m not; no one knows that better than myself.  Then there’s the question of marriage, too.”

Michael gave a mirthless laugh.

“I’m twenty-five, you see,” he said, “and it’s the family custom for the eldest son to marry at twenty-five, just as he’s baptised when he’s a certain number of weeks old, and confirmed when he is fifteen.  It’s part of the family plan, and the Medes and Persians aren’t in it when the family plan is in question.  Then, again, the lucky young woman has to be suitable; that