"Don't you go into politics, Lester!"
"No fear, old man. But what's up, now? You seem to have been ragging a good deal."
"I've been 'following the gleam,'" said Coryston, with a sarcastic mouth. "Or to put it in another way—there's a hot coal in me that makes me do certain things. I dignify it by calling it a sense of justice. What is it? I don't know. I say, Lester, are you a Suffragist?"
"Haven't made up my mind."
"I am—theoretically. But upon my word—politics plays the deuce with women. And sometimes I think that women will play the deuce with politics."
"You mean they're so unmeasured?" said Lester, cautiously.
Coryston shook his head vaguely, staring at the floor, but presently broke out:
"I say, Lester, if we can't find generosity, tenderness, an open mind—among women—where the devil are we going to find them?" He stood up. "And politics kills all that kind of thing."
"'Physician, heal thyself,'" laughed Lester.
"Ah, but it's our business!'"—Coryston smote the table beside him—"our dusty, d—d business. We've got somehow to push and harry and drive this beastly world into some sort of decency. But the women!—oughtn't they to be in the shrine—tending the mystic fire? What if the fire goes out—if the heart of the nation dies?"