“I don’t know; I wasn’t listening.”  Something moved in him, a kind of burning pity, a rage of protection.  He said quickly: 

“These are times of action.  Philosophy seems to mean nothing nowadays.  The one thing is to hate tyranny and cruelty, and protect everything that’s weak and lonely.  It’s all that’s left to make life worth living, when all the packs of all the world are out for blood.”

Noel was listening now, and he went on fervently:  “Why!  Even we who started out to fight this Prussian pack, have caught the pack feeling—­so that it’s hunting all over the country, on every sort of scent.  It’s a most infectious thing.”

“I cannot see that we are being infected, Captain Fort.”

“I’m afraid we are, Mr. Pierson.  The great majority of people are always inclined to run with the hounds; the pressure’s great just now; the pack spirit’s in the air.”

Pierson shook his head.  “No, I cannot see it,” he repeated; “it seems to me that we are all more brotherly, and more tolerant.”

“Ah! monsieur le cure,” Fort heard the painter say very gently, “it is difficult for a good man to see the evil round him.  There are those whom the world’s march leaves apart, and reality cannot touch.  They walk with God, and the bestialities of us animals are fantastic to them.  The spirit of the pack, as monsieur says, is in the air.  I see all human nature now, running with gaping mouths and red tongues lolling out, their breath and their cries spouting thick before them.  On whom they will fall next—­one never knows; the innocent with the guilty.  Perhaps if you were to see some one dear to you devoured before your eyes, monsieur le cure, you would feel it too; and yet I do not know.”

Fort saw Noel turn her face towards her father; her expression at that moment was very strange, searching, half frightened.  No!  Leila had not lied, and he had not dreamed!  That thing was true!

When presently he took his leave, and was out again in the Square, he could see nothing but her face and form before him in the moonlight:  its soft outline, fair colouring, slender delicacy, and the brooding of the big grey eyes.  He had already crossed New Oxford Street and was some way down towards the Strand, when a voice behind him murmured:  “Ah! c’est vous, monsieur!” and the painter loomed up at his elbow.

“Are you going my way?” said Fort.  “I go slowly, I’m afraid.”

“The slower the better, monsieur.  London is so beautiful in the dark.  It is the despair of the painter—­these moonlit nights.  There are moments when one feels that reality does not exist.  All is in dreams—­like the face of that young lady.”

Fort stared sharply round at him.  “Oh!  She strikes you like that, does she?”

“Ah!  What a charming figure!  What an atmosphere of the past and future round her!  And she will not let me paint her!  Well, perhaps only Mathieu Maris.”  He raised his broad Bohemian hat, and ran his fingers through his hair.