“My old habits of scheming and organising reasserted themselves.  I could even see myself suddenly returning to the north, and all the dramatic effect of it.  All that this man said witnessed to the disorder of the party indeed, but not to its damage.  I should go back stronger than I had come.  And then I thought of my lady.  You see—­how can I tell you?  There were certain peculiarities of our relationship—­as things are I need not tell you about that—­which would render her presence with me impossible.  I should have had to leave her; indeed, I should have had to renounce her clearly and openly, if I was to do all that I could do in the north.  And the man knew that, even as he talked to her and me, knew it as well as she did, that my steps to duty were—­first, separation, then abandonment.  At the touch of that thought my dream of a return was shattered.  I turned on the man suddenly, as he was imagining his eloquence was gaining ground with me.

“‘What have I to do with these things now?’ I said.  ’I have done with them.  Do you think I am coquetting with your people in coming here?’

“‘No,’ he said.  ‘But—­’

“’Why cannot you leave me alone.  I have done with these things.  I have ceased to be anything but a private man.’

“‘Yes,’ he answered.  ’But have you thought?—­this talk of war, these reckless challenges, these wild aggressions—­’

“I stood up.

“‘No,’ I cried.  ’I won’t hear you.  I took count of all those things, I weighed them—­and I have come away.’

“He seemed to consider the possibility of persistence.  He looked from me to where the lady sat regarding us.

“‘War,’ he said, as if he were speaking to himself, and then turned slowly from me and walked away.

“I stood, caught in the whirl of thoughts his appeal had set going.

“I heard my lady’s voice.

“‘Dear,’ she said; ‘but if they had need of you—­’

“She did not finish her sentence, she let it rest there.  I turned to her sweet face, and the balance of my mood swayed and reeled.

“’They want me only to do the thing they dare not do themselves,’ I said.  ’If they distrust Evesham they must settle with him themselves.’

“She looked at me doubtfully.

“‘But war—­’ she said.

“I saw a doubt on her face that I had seen before, a doubt of herself and me, the first shadow of the discovery that, seen strongly and completely, must drive us apart for ever.

“Now, I was an older mind than hers, and I could sway her to this belief or that.

“‘My dear one,’ I said, ’you must not trouble over these things.  There will be no war.  Certainly there will be no war.  The age of wars is past.  Trust me to know the justice of this case.  They have no right upon me, dearest, and no one has a right upon me.  I have been free to choose my life, and I have chosen this.’