"One can draw morals from a life like that," I said suddenly. I was
thinking rather of Jenkins than of the man I was talking to.

"Why, yes," he said, absently, "I suppose there are men who haven't the
knack of getting on."

"It's more than a knack," I said, with unnecessary bitterness. "It's a
temperament."

"I think it's a habit, too. It may be acquired, mayn't it?"

"No, no," I fulminated, "it's precisely because it can't be acquired
that the best men--the men like ..." I stopped suddenly, impressed by
the idea that the thing was out of tone. I had to assert myself more
than I liked in talking to Churchill. Otherwise I should have
disappeared. A word from him had the weight of three kingdoms and
several colonies behind it, and I was forced to get that out of my head
by making conversation a mere matter of temperament. In that I was the
stronger. If I wanted to say a thing, I said it; but he was hampered by
a judicial mind. It seemed, too, that he liked a dictatorial
interlocutor, else he would hardly have brought himself into contact
with me again. Perhaps it was new to him. My eye fell upon a couple of
masks, hanging one on each side of the fireplace. The room was full of a
profusion of little casts, thick with dust upon the shoulders, the hair,
the eyelids, on every part that projected outward.

"By-the-bye," I said, "that's a death-mask of Cromwell."

"Ah!" he answered, "I knew there _was_...."