insinuation. "Yes, he says England hasn't been touched--not considering
all there is," she went on eagerly. "He's so interesting about our
country. To listen to him makes one want so to do something."

"It would make _me_ want to," said Paul Overt, feeling strongly, on the
instant, the suggestion of what she said and that of the emotion with
which she said it, and well aware of what an incentive, on St. George's
lips, such a speech might be.

"Oh you--as if you hadn't! I should like so to hear you talk together,"
she added ardently.

"That's very genial of you; but he'd have it all his own way. I'm
prostrate before him."

She had an air of earnestness. "Do you think then he's so perfect?"

"Far from it. Some of his later books seem to me of a queerness--!"

"Yes, yes--he knows that."

Paul Overt stared. "That they seem to me of a queerness--!"

"Well yes, or at any rate that they're not what they should be. He told
me he didn't esteem them. He has told me such wonderful things--he's so
interesting."

There was a certain shock for Paul Overt in the knowledge that the fine
genius they were talking of had been reduced to so explicit a confession
and had made it, in his misery, to the first comer; for though Miss