“Miss Conyers, eh?”
The young man’s face underwent a sudden change.
“Yes,” he confessed. “If I hadn’t begun this, if I hadn’t gone so far into it that no other course was possible, I think that I should have been content to be just what I seem to be—because of her.”
Sir Alfred leaned back in his chair. He was looking at his nephew as a man of science might have looked at some interesting specimen.
“Well,” he said, “I suppose you simply confirm the experience of the ages, but, frankly, you amaze me. You are moving amongst the big places of life, you are with those who are making history, and you would be content to give the whole thing up. For what? You would become a commonplace, easy-going young animal of a British soldier, for the sake of the affection of a good-looking, well-bred, commonplace British young woman. I don’t understand you, Ronald. You have the blood of empire-makers in your veins. Your education and environment have developed an outward resemblance to the thing you profess to be, but behind—don’t you fell the grip of the other things?”
“I feel them, right enough,” Granet replied. “I have felt them for the last seven or eight years. But I am feeling something else, too, something which I dare say you never felt, something which I have never quite believed in.”
Sir Alfred leaned back in his chair.
“In a way,” he admitted, “this is disappointing. You are right. I have never felt the call of those other things. When I was a young man, I was frivolous simply when I felt inclined to turn from the big things of life for purposes of relaxation. When an alliance was suggested to me, I was content to accept it, but thank heavens I have been Oriental enough to keep women in my life where they belong. I am disappointed in you, Ronnie.”
The young man shrugged his shoulders.
“I haven’t flinched,” he said.