especially as effecting an impartiality among the religions of India;
but Vane's attempt to meet the Moslem halfway by kicking off
one boot at the gates of the mosque, was felt not so much to
indicate true impartiality as something that could only be called
an aggressive indifference. Again, it is true that an English
aristocrat can hardly enter fully into the feelings of either party
in a quarrel between a Russian Jew and an Orthodox procession
carrying relics; but Vane's idea that the procession might
carry the Jew as well, himself a venerable and historic relic,
was misunderstood on both sides. In short, he was a man who
particularly prided himself on having no nonsense about him;
with the result that he was always doing nonsensical things.
He seemed to be standing on his head merely to prove that
he was hard-headed.

He had just finished a hearty breakfast, in the society of his daughter,
at a table under a tree in his garden by the Cornish coast. For, having a
glorious circulation, he insisted on as many outdoor meals as possible,
though spring had barely touched the woods and warmed the seas round
that southern extremity of England. His daughter Barbara, a good-looking
girl with heavy red hair and a face as grave as one of the garden statues,
still sat almost motionless as a statue when her father rose.
A fine tall figure in light clothes, with his white hair and mustache
flying backwards rather fiercely from a face that was good-humored enough,
for he carried his very wide Panama hat in his hand, he strode across
the terraced garden, down some stone steps flanked with old ornamental
urns to a more woodland path fringed with little trees, and so down a
zigzag road which descended the craggy Cliff to the shore, where he was
to meet a guest arriving by boat. A yacht was already in the blue bay,
and he could see a boat pulling toward the little paved pier.