It began with a denunciation of the Little Englander.  At that period one heard, perhaps, more of the Little Englander than one does nowadays—­which to some people’s way of thinking is a pity.  The Little Englander (according to Paul) was a purblind creature, with political vision ice-bound by the economic condition of the labouring classes in Great Britain.  The Little Englander had no sense of patriotism.  The Little Englander had no sense of Empire.  He had no sense of India, Australia, Canada.  He had no sense of foreign nations’ jealousy of England’s secular supremacy.  He had a distinct idea, however, of three nationalities; those of Ireland, Scotland and Wales.  The inhabitants of those three small nations took peculiar pains to hammer that idea into his head.  But of England he had no conception save as a mere geographical expression, a little bit of red on a map of Europe, a vague place where certain sections of the population clamoured for-much pay and little work.  His dream was a parochial Utopia where the Irish peasant, the Welsh farmer and the Scottish crofter should live in luxury, and when these were satisfied, the English operative should live in moderate comfort.  The Little Englander, in his insensate altruism, dreamed of these three nations entirely independent of England, except in the trivial matter of financial support.  He wanted Australia, Canada, South Africa, to sever their links from him and take up with America, Germany, Switzerland—­anybody so long as they did not interfere with his gigantic scheme for providing tramps in Cromarty with motor cars and dissolute Welsh shepherds with champagne.  As for India, why not give it up to a benign native government which would depend upon the notorious brotherly love between Hindoo and Mussulman?  If Russia, foolish, unawakened Russia, took possession of it, what would it matter to the miner of Merthyr Tydvil?  As for England, provided such a country existed, she would be perfectly happy.  The rich would provide for the poor—­and what did anyone want further?  Paul took up the Little Englander in his arms and tossed him in the air, threw him on the ground and jumped upon him.  He cast his mutilated fragments with rare picturesqueness upon a Guy Fawkes bonfire.  The audience applauded vociferously.  He waited with a gay smile for silence, scanning them closely for the first time; and suddenly the smile faded from his face.  In the very centre of the third row sat two people who did not applaud.  They were Barney Bill and Jane.

He looked at them fascinated.  There could be no mistake.  Barney Bill’s cropped, shoe-brush hair was white as the driven snow; but the wry, bright-eyed face was unchanged.  And Jane, quietly and decently dressed, her calm eyes fixed on him, was—­Jane.  These two curiously detached themselves against the human background.  It was only the sudden stillness of the exhausted applause that brought him to consciousness of his environment; that, and a heaven-sent fellow at the back of the audience who shouted:  “Go on, sonny!”