As Paul made it, the little speech could not have been better.  Colonel Winwood, who (like the seniors of every age) deplored the lack of manners of the rising generation, was pleased by the ever so little elaborate courtesy.

“I’m only too glad we’ve pulled you round.  You’ve had a bad time, I hear.”

Paul smiled.  “Pretty bad.  If it hadn’t been for Miss Winwood and all she has done for me, I should have pegged out.”

“My sister’s a notable woman,” said the Colonel.  “When she sets out to do a thing she does it thoroughly.”

“I owe her my life,” said Paul simply.

There was a pause.  The two men, both bright-eyed, looked at each other for the fraction of a second.  One, the aristocrat secure of his wealth, of his position, of himself, with no illusion left him save pride of birth, no dream save that of an England mighty and prosperous under continuous centuries of Tory rule, no memories but of stainless honour—­he had fought gallantly for his Queen, he had lived like a noble gentleman, he had done his country disinterested service—­no ambition but to keep himself on the level of the ideal which he had long since attained; the other the creation of nothing but of dreams, the child of the gutter, the adventurer, the vagabond, with no address, not even a back room over a sweetstuff shop in wide England, the possessor of a few suits of old clothes and one pound, one shilling and a penny, with nothing in front of him but the vast blankness of ’life, nothing behind him save memories of sordid struggle, with nothing to guide him, nothing to set him on his way with thrilling pulse and quivering fibres save the Vision Splendid, the glorious Hope, the unconquerable Faith.  In the older man’s eyes Paul read the calm, stern certainty of things both born to and achieved; and Colonel Winwood saw in the young man’s eyes, as in a glass darkly, the reflection of the Vision.

“And yours is a very young life,” said he.  “Gad! it must be wonderful to be twenty.  ‘Rich in the glory of my rising sun.’  You know your Thackeray?”

“‘Riche de ma jeunesse,’” laughed Paul.  “Thackeray went one better than Beranger, that time.”

“I forgot,” said Colonel Winwood.  “My sister told me.  You go about with Beranger as a sort of pocket Bible.”

Paul laughed again.  “When one is on the tramp one’s choice of books is limited by their cubical content.  One couldn’t take Gibbon, for instance, or a complete Balzac.”

Colonel Winwood tugged at his drooping moustache and again scrutinized the frank and exceedingly attractive youth.  His astonishing perfection of feature was obvious to anybody.  Yet any inconsiderable human—­a peasant of the Campagna, a Venetian gondolier, a swaggering brigand of Macedonia—­could be astonishingly beautiful.  And, being astonishingly beautiful, that was the beginning and end of him.  But behind this merely physical attractiveness of his guest glowed a lambent intelligence, quick as lightning.  There was humorous challenge in those laughing and lucent dark eyes.