“No,” returned Noble; “I certainly do not.”
“You say you sympathise with them, but the first time it comes to action—”
“Well?”
“Oh, monsieur! one doesn't make anarchism with the head.”
Shelton perceived that he had meant to add, “but with the heart, the lungs, the liver.” He drew a deeper meaning from the saying, and seemed to see, curling with the smoke from Ferrand's lips, the words: “What do you, an English gentleman, of excellent position, and all the prejudices of your class, know about us outcasts? If you want to understand us you must be an outcast too; we are not playing at the game.”
This talk took place upon the lawn, at the end of one of Toddles's French lessons, and Shelton left John Noble maintaining to the youthful foreigner, with stubborn logic, that he, John Noble, and the anarchists had much, in common. He was returning to the house, when someone called his name from underneath the holm oak. There, sitting Turkish fashion on the grass, a pipe between his teeth, he found a man who had arrived the night before, and impressed him by his friendly taciturnity. His name was Whyddon, and he had just returned from Central Africa; a brown-faced, large-jawed man, with small but good and steady eyes, and strong, spare figure.
“Oh, Mr. Shelton!” he said, “I wondered if you could tell me what tips I ought to give the servants here; after ten years away I 've forgotten all about that sort of thing.”
Shelton sat down beside him; unconsciously assuming, too, a cross-legged attitude, which caused him much discomfort.
“I was listening,” said his new acquaintance, “to the little chap learning his French. I've forgotten mine. One feels a hopeless duffer knowing no, languages.”
“I suppose you speak Arabic?” said Shelton.