Neale found his liking for the gentle, troubled old man enough for him to say truthfully, “Mr. Welles, I don’t mind talking to you about it.  Sure, yes I can understand how having a minister put it that way. . . .  Lord!  How the old boy does spill over!  And yet why should I care?  I’m ashamed of letting harmless Mr. Bayweather get on my nerves so.”

Mr. Welles started to speak, found no words, and waved an arm as if to imply that he understood perfectly.  This made Neale laugh a little, and gave him a picture of the helplessness of a newcomer to Ashley, before the flood-tide of Mr. Bayweather’s local learning.

He went on, “He sort of taints an honest idea, doesn’t he, by his high-falutin’ way of going on about it?”

He hesitated, trying to think of simple words to sum up what he had, after all, never exactly formulated because it had been so much an attitude he and Marise had silently grown into.  It was hard, he found, to hit on any expression that said what he wanted to; but after all, it wasn’t so very important whether he did or not.  He was only trying to make a nice tired old man think himself enough respected to be seriously talked to.  He’d just ramble on, till Marise brought the other visitors up to them.

And yet as he talked, he got rather interested in his statement of it.  A comparison of baseball and tennis ethics came into his mind as apposite, and quite tickled him by its aptness.  Mr. Welles threw in an occasional remark.  He was no man’s fool, it soon appeared, for all his mildness.  And for a time he seemed to be interested.

But presently Neale noticed that the other was looking absent and no longer made any comments.  That was what happened, Neale reflected with an inward smile, as he slowed down and prepared to stop, when anybody succeeded in getting you started on your hobby.  They were bored.  They didn’t really want to know after all.  It was like trying to tell folks about your travels.

But he was astonished to the limit of astonishment by what Mr. Welles brought out in the silence which finally dropped between them.  The old man looked at him very hard and asked, “Mr. Crittenden, do you know anything about the treatment of the Negroes in the South?”

Neale sat up blinking.  “Why no, nothing special, except that it’s a fearful knot we don’t seem to get untied,” he said.  “I contribute to the support of an agricultural school in Georgia, but I’m afraid I never take much time to read the reports they send me.  Why do you ask?”

“Oh, no particular reason.  I have a relative down there, that’s all.”

Marise and the others came out of a door at the far-end of the building now, and advanced towards them slowly.  Neale and Mr. Welles watched them.

Neale was struck again by Marsh’s appearance.  As far away as you could see him, he held the eye.  “An unusual man, your friend Mr. Marsh,” he remarked.  “Mrs. Crittenden tells me that he is one of the people who have been everywhere and done everything and seen everybody.  He looks the part.”