nothing. He was, in fact, thinking, with that continuity characteristic
of a man who at fifty has won for himself a place of permanent
importance in the Home Office. Starting life in the Royal Engineers, he
still preserved something of a military look about his figure, and grave
visage with steady eyes and drooping moustache (both a shade grayer than
those of Felix), and a forehead bald from justness and knowing where to
lay his hand on papers. His face was thinner, his head narrower, than
his brother's, and he had acquired a way of making those he looked at
doubt themselves and feel the sudden instability of all their facts. He
was--as has been said--thinking. His brother Stanley had wired to him
that morning: "Am motoring up to-day on business; can you get Felix to
come at six o'clock and talk over the position at Tod's?" What position
at Tod's? He had indeed heard something vague--of those youngsters of
Tod's, and some fuss they were making about the laborers down there. He
had not liked it. Too much of a piece with the general unrest, and these
new democratic ideas that were playing old Harry with the country!
For in his opinion the country was in a bad way, partly owing to
Industrialism, with its rotting effect upon physique; partly to this
modern analytic Intellectualism, with its destructive and anarchic
influence on morals. It was difficult to overestimate the mischief of
those two factors; and in the approaching conference with his brothers,
one of whom was the head of an industrial undertaking, and the other
a writer, whose books, extremely modern, he never read, he was perhaps
vaguely conscious of his own cleaner hands. Hearing a car come to a halt
outside, he went to the window and looked out. Yes, it was Stanley!...


Stanley Freeland, who had motored up from Becket--his country place,
close to his plough works in Worcestershire--stood a moment on the
pavement, stretching his long legs and giving directions to his