safe I knotted it up in the tail of my shirt, which waggled out of the seat of my breeches.  It was given to me by a beautiful lady, who, I remember, smelled like all the perfumes of Araby.  She awakened my aesthetic sense by the divine and intoxicating odour that emanated from her.  Since then I have never met woman so—­so like a scented garden of all the innocences.  To me she was a goddess.  I overheard her prophesy things about me.  My life began from that moment.  I kept the cornelian heart all my life, as a talisman.  It has brought me through all kinds of things.  Once I was going to throw it away and Miss Winwood would not let me.  I kept it, somewhat against my will, for I thought it was a lying talisman.  It had told me, in the sweet-scented lady’s words, that I was the son of a prince.  Give me half an hour to-morrow or the day after,” he said, seeing a puzzled look in Frank Ayres’s face, “and I’ll tell you a true psychological fairy tale—­the apologia pro vita mea.  I say, anyhow, that lately, until last night, I thought this little cornelian heart was a lying talisman.  Then I knew it didn’t lie.  I was the son of a prince, a prince of men, although he had been in gaol and spent his days afterwards in running emotional Christianity and fried-fish shops.  His name was Silas.  Mine is Paul.  Something significant about it, isn’t there?  Anyhow”—­he balanced the heart in the palm of his hand—­“this hasn’t lied.  It has carried me through all my life.  When I thought it failed, I found it at the purest truth of its prophecy.  It’s not going to fail me now.  If it’s right for me to take my seat I’ll take it—­whether I make good politically, or not, is on the knees of the gods.  But you may take it from me that there’s nothing in this wide world that I won’t face or go through with, if I’ve set my mind to it.”

So the child who had kicked Billy Goodge and taken the spolia opima of paper cocked hat and wooden sword spoke through the man.  As then, in a queer way, he found himself commanding a situation; and as then, commanding it rightfully, through sheer personal force.  Again, at a sign, he would have broken the sword across his knee.  But the sign did not come.

“Speaking quite unofficially,” said Frank Ayres, “I think, if you feel like that, you would be a fool to give up your seat.”

“Very well,” said Paul, “I thank you.  And now, perhaps, it would be wise to draw up that statement for the press, if you can spare the time.”

So Paul made a draft and Frank Ayres revised it, and it was sent upstairs to be typed.  When the typescript came down, Paul signed and dispatched it and gave the Chief Whip a duplicate.

“Well,” said the latter, shaking hands, “the best of good luck!”

Whereupon he went home feeling that though there would be the deuce to pay, Paul Savelli would find himself perfectly solvent; and meeting the somewhat dubious Leader of the Opposition later in the day he said:  “Anyhow, this ‘far too gentlemanly party’ has got someone picturesque, at last, to touch the popular imagination.”