“I hope you won’t be nervous,” said Miss Winwood. on the morning of the meeting.

“I nervous?” He laughed.  “What is there to be nervous about?”

“I’ve had over twenty years’ experience of public speaking, and I’m always nervous when I get up.”

“It’s only because you persistently refuse to realize what a wonderful woman you are,” he said affectionately.

“And you,” she teased, “are you always realizing what a wonderful man you are?”

He cried with his sunny boldness:  “Why not?  It’s faith in oneself and one’s destiny that gets things done.”

The drill hall was full.  Party feeling ran high in those days at Hickney Heath, for a Liberal had ousted a Unionist from a safe seat at the last General Election, and the stalwarts of the defeated party, thirsting for revenge, supported the new movement.  If a child was not born a Conservative, he should be made one.  That was the watchword of the League.  They were also prepared to welcome the new star that had arisen to guide the younger generation out of the darkness.  When, therefore, the Chairman, Mr. John Felton, M.P., who had held minor office in the last administration, had concluded his opening remarks, having sketched briefly the history of the League and intro duced Mr. Paul Savelli, in the usual eulogistic terms, as their irresistible Organizing Secretary, and Paul in his radiant young manhood sprang up before them, the audience greeted him with enthusiastic applause.  They had expected, as an audience does expect in an unknown speaker, any one of the usual types of ordinary looking politicians—­perhaps bald, perhaps grey headed, perhaps pink and fat—­it did not matter; but they did not expect the magnetic personality of this young man of astonishing beauty, with his perfect features, wavy black hair, athletic build and laughing eyes, who seemed the embodiment of youth and joy and purpose and victory.

Before he spoke a word, he knew that he bad them under his control, and he felt the great thrill of it.  Physically he had the consciousness of a blaze of light, of a bare barn of an ungalleried place, of thickly-set row upon row of faces, and a vast confused flutter of beating hands.  The applause subsided.  He turned with his “Mr. Chairman, Your Highness, Ladies and Gentlemen,” to the circle behind him, caught Miss Winwood, his dearest lady’s smile, caught and held for a hundredth part of a second the deep blue eyes of the Princess—­she wore a great hat with a grey feather and a chinchilla coat thrown open, and looked the incarnation of all the beauty and all the desires of all his dreams—­and with a flash of gladness faced the audience and plunged into his speech.