"Well?"
"I'll have to go my ways from here long before I can play."
"Any great hurry?"
"I can't go on accepting your wonderful hospitality indefinitely," said Paul.
"That's nonsense. Stay as long as ever you like."
"If I did that," said Paul, "I would stay on forever."
The Colonel smiled and shook hands with him. In the ordinary way of social life this was quite an unnecessary thing to do. But he acted according to the impulses common to a thousand of his type—and a fine type—in England. Setting aside the mere romantic exterior of a Macedonian brigand, here was a young man of the period with astonishingly courteous manners, of—and this was of secondary consideration—of frank and winning charm, with a free-and-easy intimacy with Balzac, of fearless truthfulness regarding his deficiencies, and with a golf handicap of one. The Colonel's hand and heart went out in instinctive coordination. The Colonel Winwoods of this country are not gods; they are very humanly fallible; but of such is the Kingdom of England.
"At any rate," said he, "you mustn't dream of leaving us yet."
He went downstairs and met his sister in the hall.
"Well?" she asked, with just a gleam of quizzicality in her eyes, for she knew whence he had come.