Helen's face was flushed. Presently Gard became absorbed and looked at it no longer. He was trying to get not merely the sound of the marching, the ripple of the flags, and the elation of the crowds, but something about devotion and the spirit of the nation shining like the sun on the faces of its soldiers. Mrs. Mavering, too, turned from Helen, and noticed how thickly Morgan's yellow eyebrows were knit above his eyes, which seemed to have a kind of green glare in them. They were fixed on Helen. A sudden memory shot through Mrs. Mavering's mind like a sharp pain—she shivered. Thaddeus noted it.
"Exactly," he murmured to her; "quite so."
Gard found his theme and began weaving it in among the drums and fifes, increasing it until drums, fifes, and flags seemed only like the surface ripple of a deep stream, so grave it was, so large and resolute, so brimmed with its purpose. Helen saw the success and bent forward. Morgan made a slight choking noise in his throat.
"Exactly," murmured Thaddeus; "quite so."
Gard finished abruptly and turned to Helen. "I don't suppose it's half true." He appeared to be continuing the subject, secure of her understanding it up to that point.
"Oh, why not?"
"It doesn't read like it in the newspapers," he said, and rose presently to go. Thaddeus, too, must run down to his club; would Mrs. Mavering forgive him and stay with Helen till he came back? Morgan took his leave with conventional phrases. And the three having each taken himself and his egoism away, Helen and Mrs. Mavering were left with Thaddeus's trim sea-coal fire, marble mantle, china figurines of the neat ankles, gilt chandeliers, and flowered carpet.
Helen took her favorite place at Mrs. Mavering's feet, and said, "Uncle Tad's fires always have company manners."
As for Morgan, Mrs. Mavering thought, he did not like to see that Helen could be moved by powers that he could not himself attain; perhaps neither knew nor cared what those powers were, only knew that he could not attain them. But Thaddeus's airy structure, his theory of the primitive, did not follow necessarily. Yet she felt that a certain atmosphere of animosity surrounded Morgan; he was either aggressively or indifferently hostile; or else it was because one felt his intention to dominate, and indifference whether the dominance were admitted with peace or in process of war.
"Don't you want to confess, Helen?"