"
"You mean they're so unmeasured?" said Lester, cautiously.
Coryston shook his head vaguely, staring at the floor, but presently broke
out:
"I say, Lester, if we can't find generosity, tenderness, an open
mind--among women--where the devil are we going to find them?" He stood up.
"And politics kills all that kind of thing."
"'Physician, heal thyself,'" laughed Lester.
"Ah, but it's our _business_!'"--Coryston smote the table beside
him--"our dusty, d--d business. We've got somehow to push and harry
and drive this beastly world into some sort of decency. But the
women!--oughtn't they to be in the shrine--tending the mystic fire? What if
the fire goes out--if the heart of the nation dies?"
Lester's blue-gray eyes looked up quietly. There was sympathy in them, but
he said nothing.
Coryston tramped half-way to the library door, then turned back.
"My mother's quite a good woman," he said, abruptly. "There are no great
scandals on this estate--it's better managed than most. But because of this
poison of politics, no one can call their souls their own. If she'd let
them live their own lives they'd adore her."
"The trade-unions are just the same.
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