“There’s an arch-plotter at work.  His name is Hunger.  Let us be glad that Italy can’t enrich herself by manufactures.  Who knows?  The revolution against militarism may begin there, as that against feudalism did in France.  Talk of enthusiasm!  How should we feel if we read in the paper some morning that the Italian people had formed into an army of peace—­refusing to pay another centesimo for warfare?

“The next boat for Calais!  The next train for Rome!” Their eyes met, interchanging gleams of laughter.

“Oh, but the crowd, the crowd!” sighed Piers.  “What is bad enough to say of it? who shall draw its picture with long enough ears?”

“It has another aspect, you know.”

“It has.  At its best, a smiling simpleton; at its worst, a murderous maniac.”

“You are not exactly a socialist,” remarked Irene, with that smile which, linking past and present, blended in Otway’s heart old love and new—­her smile of friendly irony.

“Socialism?  I seldom think of it; which means, that I have no faith in it.—­When we came in, you were playing.”

“I miss the connection,” said Irene, with a puzzled air.

“Forgive me.  I am fond of music, and it has been in my mind all the time—­the hope that you would play again.”

“Oh, that was merely the slow music, as one might say, of the drawing-room mysteries—­an obligato in the after-dinner harmony.  I play only to amuse myself—­or when it is a painful duty.”

Piers was warned by his tactful conscience that he had held Miss Derwent quite long enough in talk.  A movement in their neighbourhood gave miserable opportunity; he resigned his seat to another expectant, and did his best to converse with someone else.

Her voice went with him as he walked homewards across the Park, under a fleecy sky silvered with moonlight; the voice which now and again brought back so vividly their first meeting at Ewell.  He lived through it all again, the tremors, the wild hopes, the black despair of eight years ago.  How she encountered him on the stairs, talked of his long hours of study, and prophesied—­with that indescribable blending of gravity and jest, still her characteristic—­that he would come to grief over his examination.  Irene!  Irene!  Did she dream what was in his mind and heart?  The long, long love, his very life through all labours and cares and casualties—­did she suspect it, imagine it?  If she had received his foolish verses (he grew hot to think of them), there must have been at least a moment when she knew that he worshipped her, and does such knowledge ever fade from a woman’s memory?