Everybody laughed, and then the rector said to Paul: "You are quite right in what you say about athletics being a good antidote against fads."
"Fads being the ruin of any political party," added Mr. Ford.
"But a man's duty to his own conscience comes before his duty to the State," said Edgar; "and I cannot see that any one is justified in defending a course of action which he considers wrong, simply because his party is pledged to that course."
"In politics, as in scene-painting," murmured Mr. Madderley, "I suppose one has to consider general effects rather than minute details."
"And the pre-Raphaelite school would not be effective from a political standpoint," added Mr. Ford.
The artist shrugged his shoulders. "I am not sure that it is from an artistic one."
"Are you not? Then I am afraid I shall have to quarrel with you, Mr. Madderley," said his hostess.
"Then you will have to quarrel with the rector too, and I will help you," remarked Mrs. Stoneley, "although I have been a devoted wife to him for forty years, he quarrels regularly with me every Academy because I like looking at pictures that he says are without perspective."
"I know the sort," cried Isabel, "dear little scriptural things, like tame and domestic church-windows."
"It is just like men to bother about perspective," added Mrs. Stoneley, "they are so literal, poor dears! that it is not safe to leave anything to their imaginations. Besides you cannot leave anything to something which does not exist."