“Agree or not, your position towards public affairs is very like the Church’s attitude towards marriage and divorce; as remote from the realities of life as the attitude of the believer in Free Love, and not more likely to catch on.  The death of your point of view lies in itself—­it’s too dried-up and far from things ever to understand them.  If you don’t understand you can never rule.  You might just as well keep your hands in your pockets, as go into politics with your notions!”

“I fear we must continue to agree to differ.”

“Well; perhaps I do pay you too high a compliment.  After all, you are a patrician.”

“You speak in riddles, Mr. Courtier.”

The dark-eyed woman stirred; her hands gave a sort of flutter, as though in deprecation of acerbity.

Rising at once, and speaking in a deferential voice, the elder man said: 

“We’re tiring Mrs. Noel.  Good-night, Audrey, It’s high time I was off.”  Against the darkness of the open French window, he turned round to fire a parting shot.

“What I meant, Lord Miltoun, was that your class is the driest and most practical in the State—­it’s odd if it doesn’t save you from a poet’s dreams.  Good-night!” He passed out on to the lawn, and vanished.

The young man sat unmoving; the glow of the fire had caught his face, so that a spirit seemed clinging round his lips, gleaming out of his eyes.  Suddenly he said: 

“Do you believe that, Mrs. Noel?”

For answer Audrey Noel smiled, then rose and went over to the window.

“Look at my dear toad!  It comes here every evening!” On a flagstone of the verandah, in the centre of the stream of lamplight, sat a little golden toad.  As Miltoun came to look, it waddled to one side, and vanished.

“How peaceful your garden is!” he said; then taking her hand, he very gently raised it to his lips, and followed his opponent out into the darkness.

Truly peace brooded over that garden.  The Night seemed listening—­all lights out, all hearts at rest.  It watched, with a little white star for every tree, and roof, and slumbering tired flower, as a mother watches her sleeping child, leaning above him and counting with her love every hair of his head, and all his tiny tremors.

Argument seemed child’s babble indeed under the smile of Night.  And the face of the woman, left alone at her window, was a little like the face of this warm, sweet night.  It was sensitive, harmonious; and its harmony was not, as in some faces, cold—­but seemed to tremble and glow and flutter, as though it were a spirit which had found its place of resting.

In her garden,—­all velvety grey, with black shadows beneath the yew-trees, the white flowers alone seemed to be awake, and to look at her wistfully.  The trees stood dark and still.  Not even the night birds stirred.  Alone, the little stream down in the bottom raised its voice, privileged when day voices were hushed.