"I don't imagine there is any lack of that! But certainly he holds himself aloof from nothing and nobody! I hear of him everywhere."
"What!—among the smart people?"
Aldous nodded.
"A change of policy by all accounts," said Hallin, musing. "He must do it with intention. He is not the man to let himself be be-Capua-ed all at once."
"Oh dear, no!" said Aldous, drily. "He does it with intention. Nobody supposes him to be the mere toady. All the same I think he may very well overrate the importance of the class he is trying to make use of, and its influence. Have you been following the strike 'leaders' in the Clarion?"
"No!" cried Hallin, flushing. "I would not read them for the world! I might not be able to go on giving to the strike."
Aldous fell silent, and Hallin presently saw that his mind had harked back to the one subject that really held the depths of it. The truest friendship, Hallin believed, would be never to speak to him of Marcella Boyce—never to encourage him to dwell upon her, or upon anything connected with her. But his yearning, sympathetic instinct would not let him follow his own conviction.
"Miss Boyce, you know, has been here two or three times while you have been away," he said quickly, as he got up to post a letter.
Aldous hesitated; then he said—
"Do you gather that her nursing life satisfies her?"