Mrs. Noel was not at home, but since the maid informed him that she
would be in directly, he sat down to wait. Her flat, which was
on--the first floor, overlooked the river and had evidently been taken
furnished, for there were visible marks of a recent struggle with an
Edwardian taste which, flushed from triumph over Victorianism, had
filled the rooms with early Georgian remains. On the only definite
victory, a rose-coloured window seat of great comfort and little age,
Courtier sat down, and resigned himself to doing nothing with the ease
of an old soldier.
To the protective feeling he had once had for a very graceful,
dark-haired child, he joined not only the championing pity of a man of
warm heart watching a woman in distress, but the impatience of one, who,
though temperamentally incapable of feeling oppressed himself, rebelled
at sight of all forms of tyranny affecting others.
The sight of the grey towers, still just visible, under which
Miltoun and his father sat, annoyed him deeply; symbolizing to him,
Authority--foe to his deathless mistress, the sweet, invincible lost
cause of Liberty. But presently the river; bringing up in flood the
unbound water that had bathed every shore, touched all sands, and seen
the rising and falling of each mortal star, so soothed him with its
soundless hymn to Freedom, that Audrey Noel coming in with her hands
full of flowers, found him sleeping firmly, with his mouth shut.
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