"Ay!" said Paul—"what a dream!"
"There was never a dream worth calling a dream that did not come true."
"Do you believe that, too?" he asked delightedly. "I've held to it all my life."
Colonel Winwood, who had been moving hostwise from group to group in the great drawing-room, where already a couple of bridge tables had been arranged, approached slowly. Lady Chudley gave him a laughing glance of dismissal. Paul's spacious Elizabethan patriotism, rare—at least in expression—among the young men of the day, interested and amused her.
"Have you dreamed all your life of being the Awakener of England?"
"I have dreamed of being so many things," he said, anxious not to commit himself. For, truth to say, this new ambition was but a couple of minutes old.
It had sprung into life, however, like Pallas Athene, all armed and equipped.
"And they have all come true?"
His great eyes laughed and his curly head bent ever so slightly. "Those worth calling dreams," said he.
A little later in the evening, when on retiring to an early bed he was wishing Miss Winwood good night, she said, "You're a lucky young man."