Eustace spoke excitedly, and tossed off a glass of liqueur.  His manner had become more youthful than of wont; his face showed more colour.

“The fact is,” he went on, “if I talk politics at all, I can manage the Radical standpoint much more easily than the Tory.  I have precious little sympathy with anything popular, that’s true; but it’s easier for me to adopt the heroic strain of popular leaders than to put my own sentiments into the language of squires and parsons.  I should feel I was doing a baser thing if I talked vulgar Toryism than in roaring the democratic note.  Do you understand?”

“I have an inkling of what you mean.”

Eustace refilled the little glass.

“Of course,” he went on, “my true life stands altogether outside popular contention.  I am an artist, though only half-baked But I admit most heartily that our form of government is a good one—­the most favourable that exists to individual freedom.  We are ruled by the balance of two parties; neither could do without the other.  This being the case, a man of my mind may conscientiously support either side.  Nowadays neither is a foe to liberty; we know that party tall-talk means nothing—­mere playing to the gallery.  If I throw whatever weight I represent into the Liberal scales, I am only helping, like every other Member of Parliament, to maintain the constitutional equilibrium.  You see, this view is not even cynical; any one might proclaim it seriously.”

“Yes; but don’t do so in Polterham.”

The other laughed, and at the same moment remembered how long it was since such an expression of mirth had escaped his lips.

“Well,” he exclaimed, “I feel better to-day than for long enough.  I’ve been going through a devilish bad time, I can tell you.  To make things worse, some one has fixed an infernal accusation on me—­an abominable calumny.  I won’t talk about it now, but it may be necessary some day.”

“Calumny?—­nothing that could be made use against you in public?”

“No danger of that, I think.  I didn’t mean to speak of it.”

“You know that a man on the hustings must look out for mud?”

“Of course, of course!—­How do you spend your afternoons?  What shall we do?”

William threw away the end of a cigar, and stretched himself.

“I do very little but read,” he answered.  “A man gets the reading habit, just like the morphia habit, or anything else of that kind.  I think my average is six novels a week:  French, Russian, German, Italian.  No English, unless I’m in need of an emetic.  What else should I do?  It’s a way of watching contemporary life.—­Would you like to go and talk with Ivy?  Oh, I forgot that girl.”

“You wouldn’t care to ask some people to dinner one of these days—­ the right kind of people?”

“Yes, yes; we’ll do that.  I must warn you not to talk much about art, and above all not to play the piano.  It would make a bad impression.”