“Because it’s the noblest country in the world,” he cried; and, seeing approval in her eyes, he yielded to an odd temptation.  “If one could only do something great for her!”

“What would you like to do?” she asked.

“Anything.  Sing for her.  Work for her.  Die for her.  It makes one so impatient to sit down and do nothing.  If one could only stir her up to a sense of her nationality!” he went on, less lyrically, though with the same fine enthusiasm.  “She seems to be losing it, letting the smaller nations assert theirs to such an extent that she is running the risk of becoming a mere geographical expression.  She has merged herself in the Imperial Ideal.  That’s magnificent; but the Empire ought to realize her as the great Motherheart.  If England could only wake up as England again, what a wonderful thing it would be!”

“It would,” said Lady Chudley.  “And you would like to be the awakener?”

“Ay!” said Paul—­“what a dream!”

“There was never a dream worth calling a dream that did not come true.”

“Do you believe that, too?” he asked delightedly.  “I’ve held to it all my life.”

Colonel Winwood, who had been moving hostwise from group to group in the great drawing-room, where already a couple of bridge tables had been arranged, approached slowly.  Lady Chudley gave him a laughing glance of dismissal.  Paul’s spacious Elizabethan patriotism, rare—­ at least in expression—­among the young men of the day, interested and amused her.

“Have you dreamed all your life of being the Awakener of England?”

“I have dreamed of being so many things,” he said, anxious not to commit himself.  For, truth to say, this new ambition was but a couple of minutes old.

It had sprung into life, however, like Pallas Athene, all armed and equipped.

“And they have all come true?”

His great eyes laughed and his curly head bent ever so slightly.  “Those worth calling dreams,” said he.

A little later in the evening, when on retiring to an early bed he was wishing Miss Winwood good night, she said, “You’re a lucky young man.”

“I know—­but—­” He looked smiling inquiry.

“Lady Chudley’s the most valuable woman in England for a young man to get on the right side of.”

Paul went to bed dazed.  The great lady who had recognized the divine fire in the factory boy had again recognized it in the grown man.  She had all but said that, if he chose, he could be the Awakener of England.  The Awakener of England!  The watchword of his new-born ambition rang in his brain until he fell asleep.