The Dictator was inclined to resent the intrusion of a woman into his thoughts. For years he had been in the habit of regarding women as trees walking. He had had a love disappointment early in life. His true love had proved a false true love, and he had taken it very seriously—taken it quite to heart. He was not enough of a modern London man to recognise the fact that something of the kind happens to a good many people, and that there are still a great many girls left to choose from. He ought to have made nothing of it, and consoled himself easily, but he did not. So he had lost his ideal of womanhood, and went through the world like one deprived of a sense. The man is, on the whole, happiest whose true love dies early, and leaves him with an ideal of womanhood which never can change. He is, if he be at all a true man, thenceforth as one who walks under the guidance of an angel. But Ericson's mind was put out by the failure of his ideal. Happily he was a strong man by nature, with deep impassioned longings and profound convictions; and going on through life in his lonely, overcrowded way, he soon became absorbed in the entrancing egotism of devotion to a great cause. He began to see all things in life first as they bore on the regeneration of Gloria—now as they bore on his restoration to Gloria. So he had been forgetting all about women, except as ornaments of society, and occasionally as useful mechanisms in politics.
The memory of his false true love had long faded. He did not now particularly regret that she had been false. He did not regret it even for her own sake—for he knew that she had got on very well in life—had married a rich man—held a good position in society, and apparently had all her desires gratified. It was probable—it was almost certain—that he should meet her in London this season—and he felt no interest or curiosity about the meeting—did not even trouble himself by wondering whether she had been following his career with eyes in which old memories gleamed. But after her he had done no love-making and felt inclined for no romance. His ideal, as has been said, was gone—and he did not care for women without an ideal to pursue.
Every night, however late, when the Dictator had got back to his rooms, Hamilton came to see him, and they read over letters and talked over the doings of the next day. Hamilton came this night in the usual course of things, and Ericson was delighted to see him. He was sick of trying to study the street improvements of the metropolis of Gloria, and he was vexed at the intrusion of Helena Langley into his mind—for he did not suspect in the least that she had yet made any intrusion into his heart.
'Well, Hamilton, I hope you have been enjoying yourself?'
'Yes, Excellency—fairly enough. Do you know I had a long talk with Sir Rupert Langley about you?'
'Aye, aye. What does Sir Rupert say about me?'
'Well, he says,' Hamilton began distressedly, 'that you had better give up all notions of Gloria and go in for English politics.'
The Dictator laughed; and at the same time felt a little touched. He could not help remembering the declaration of his life's policy he had just been making to Sir Rupert Langley's daughter.
'What on earth do I know about English politics?'
'Oh, well; of course you could get it all up easily enough, so far as that goes.'