"Are you sure there's nothing else, Alexander?" she asked.
"I think I've got everything that's of real service," said he. "I don't want to overload it."
Of course not; excess luggage may be very expensive. May was smiling as she handed back the Address.
"It's extraordinarily clever," she remarked. "You are extraordinarily clever, you know."
"There's nothing in it that isn't pretty obvious," said he, though he was well pleased.
"Oh, to you, yes, obvious to you; that's just it," she said.
But amongst all that was in the portmanteau there was nothing that could be construed into a friendly word for the Crusade; and were not the anxious minds of the Henstead Wesleyans meant to read a disclaimer of that great movement in a reference to "the laudable and growing activity of all religious denominations, each within the sphere of its own action"? Quisanté had put in "legitimate" before "sphere," but crossed it out again; the hint was plain enough without, and a superfluous word is a word too much. "Sphere," implies limitations; the Crusade had negatived them. This significant passage in the Address was fresh in May's mind when, a day or two later, her husband came in, fretful and out of humour. He flung a note down on the table, saying in a puzzled tone,
"I can't think what's come over Dick Benyon. You know my fight'll be over before his is half-way through, and I wrote offering to go and make a couple of speeches for him. He writes back to say that under existing circumstances he thinks it'll be better for him not to trouble me. Read his note; it's very stiff and distant."
"Can you wonder?" was what rose to her lips. She did not put the question. The odd thing was that most undoubtedly he could wonder and did wonder, that he did not understand why Dick should be aggrieved nor, probably, why, even though he chose to be aggrieved, he should therefore decline assistance of unquestionable value.
"Well, there'll be a lot of people glad to have me," said Quisanté in resentful peevishness. "And I daresay, if I have a big win, he'll change his mind. I shall be worth having then."