But with a man like Michael Herne the whole of this process worked backwards. He had hardly realised what personal romance was inspiring the impersonal romance of his historical revolution. He had had nothing but a sense of growing glory within; of a world that grew larger and loftier like an expanding sunrise or a rising tide; and which was yet of the same unconscious stuff as the day-dreams of his youth. He had had at first the feeling that a hobby had become a holiday. He had then had more and more feeling that the holiday had become a festival, in the sense of the solemn festival of a god. Only at the back of his mind did he assume that the god was a goddess. He was a man whose life had been almost wholly without personal relations. Therefore even when he was in fact growing from head to foot with a personal relation, he hardly knew that it was personal. He would have said in a sort of rapture that he was supported in his work by the most glorious friends that God had given to man. He would have spoken of them radiantly and collectively as if of a cloud of angels. And yet at any moment, even from the first, if Rosamund Severne had quarrelled with him and left that company, he would instantly have discovered his disease.

And yet it happened, as such coincidences do happen, hardly half an hour after those two that had met as enemies, and continued as friends, and had parted as lovers. So soon after they had said their farewell amid the incongruous clatter of industrial politics, the man who had in some sense divided them, if only symbolically, discovered that a man is meant in this world to be something more than a symbol. He saw Rosamund standing on the high terrace of the lawn, and the whole earth changed around her.

The news of Braintree’s defiance brought a certain doubt and depression to the more romantic group at Seawood but nothing but rage and fury to Rosamund Severne. She was the sort of woman inevitably irritated by strikes if only because they are delays. Waste of time was more vivid to her than loss of principle. Many have imagined that feminine politics would be merely pacifist or humanitarian or sentimental. The real danger of feminine politics is too much love of a masculine policy. There are a good many Rosamund Severnes in the world.

She could get no relief from her impatience from the tone of the men around her, though most of them were in principle far more prejudiced against Braintree than she was. But they did not seem to react as one should react to a challenge. Her father told her at some length the real essentials of the situation, which he would have no difficulty in placing before the malcontents in due course. But as his remarks affected even his own daughter with a sensation of faint fatigue, she could hardly persuade herself that they would affect his mortal enemies to an emotional repentance. Lord Eden was more brief but not much more brisk in his comments. He said that time would show; and expressed doubt about the ultimate economic resources of the revolt. Whether designedly or no, he said nothing about the new organisation of society which he himself had helped to establish. For all of them it seemed as if a shadow had fallen across all that shining array. Beyond the park, beyond the gates of their chivalric paradise, the modern monster, the great black factory town, lay snorting up its smoke in defiance and derision.

“They’re all so slack about it,” Rosamund confided to Monkey, that universal confidant. “Can’t you do something to get a move on? And after all our flag-waving and blowing of trumpets.”

“Well,” said Murrel dubiously, “all that has what they call a moral effect; only some people call it bluff. If it goes swinging along and everybody falls in with it, the thing works; and it often does. You can try your luck in rallying everybody to a flag. But you don’t fight with a flag.”

“Do you realise what this man Braintree has done,” she cried indignantly. “He has dared us all. He has dared the King-at-Arms and the King.”

“Well,” replied Murrel in a detached manner, “I don’t quite see what the devil else he could do. If I were in his place–”

“But you’re not in his place,” she cried vehemently, “you’re not in the place of any rebel or rioter. Don’t you ever think, Douglas, that it is time you were in your own place.”

Murrel smiled rather wearily. “I admit,” he said, “that I happen to be able to see two sides of a question. And I suppose you’d say its done by walking round and round it.”

“I say,” she said rising in wrath, “that I never met a man who saw both sides of a question without wanting to clout him on both sides of the head.”

Presumably lest she should yield to this impulse, she departed in a storm, and swept up the long lawns and terraces towards the old raised garden in which the play of Blondel the Troubadour had once been performed. And the coincidence came back to her with something of a pang of memory; for in that green deserted theatre stood one green deserted figure in forester’s costume, with a mane of light hair and a lifted leonine head, looking across the valley towards the smoking town.

For a moment she stood as if caught in a mesh of memories merely elfin and fantastic; as if she had loved and lost something unreal; the music and emotion of the theatricals revisited her and lulled her lust for action; but in a moment she had brushed it away like a cobweb and spoke in her own firm voice.

“You know your revolutionists have sent their reply. I hear they will not come to the Court.”

He looked round slowly in his rather short-sighted fashion; only the pause before he spoke expressed the change in his feelings on hearing the voice that hailed him.

“Yes, I have received their message,” he said mildly. “It was addressed to me. They certainly state their position clearly; but they will come to the Court all right.”

“They will come!” she repeated in some excitement. “Do you mean that Braintree has yielded?”

“They will come, yes,” he repeated, nodding. “Braintree has not yielded; indeed I did not expect him to do so. To tell the truth, I rather respect him for not doing so. He is a very courageous and consistent man; and it is always so much pleasanter to have an opponent of that kind.”

“But I don’t understand,” she cried. “What do you mean by saying they won’t yield but they will come?”

“The new constitution,” he explained, “provides for the situation, as I suppose most constitutions do. It’s rather like what we used to call a subpoena. I don’t know how many men I shall want with me; but I suppose some of the Hundreds may have to turn out.”

“What!” she cried. “You don’t mean that you are going to fetch them to the Court!”

“Oh yes, the law is quite clear on that point,” he answered. “And as the law makes me the executive officer, I have really no will in the matter.”

“You seem to have more will than anybody else I’ve come across yet,” she said. “You should hear Monkey!”

“Of course,” he said in his pedantic way, “what I state is a purpose and not a prediction. I cannot answer for what anyone else will do or will succeed in doing. But they will come here or I shall not come.”

His meticulous phraseology suddenly thrilled through her thoughts as she understood what he meant.

“You mean there will be fighting,” she said.

“There certainly will be on our side if there is on theirs,” he answered.

“You are the only man in this house,” cried Rosamund and found herself suddenly trembling from head to foot.

It seemed as if his stiff attitude was staggered so that he lost control of himself quite unexpectedly. He uttered a sort of cry.

“You must not say that to me; I am weak; and weakest of all now, when I should try to be strong.”

“You are not weak at all,” she said, recovering her firm voice.