all, only dreaming. I should like to be put at the head of an army, but
when I am seized with an idea I have to rush to put it down.'

Finding no appropriate answer to these somewhat erratic remarks, the
priest joined in a discussion that had been started concerning the
action taken by the Church during the present agrarian agitation. Mr.
Barton, who was weary of the subject, stepped aside, and, sitting on one
of the terrace benches between Cecilia and Alice, he feasted his eyes on
the colour-changes that came over the sea, and in long-drawn-out and
disconnected phrases explained his views on nature and art until the
bell was rung for the children to assemble in the school-hall.




II


It was a large room with six windows; these had been covered over with
red cloth, and the wall opposite was decorated with plates, flowers, and
wreaths woven out of branches of ilex and holly.

Chairs for the visitors had been arranged in a semicircle around the
Bishop's throne--a great square chair approached by steps, and rendered
still more imposing by the canopy, whose voluminous folds fell on either
side like those of a corpulent woman's dress. Opposite was the stage.
The footlights were turned down, but the blue mountains and brown
palm-trees of the drop-curtain, painted by one of the nuns, loomed
through the red obscurity of the room. Benches had been set along the
walls. Between them a strip of carpet, worked with roses and lilies,