Lord Evelyn looked up.

“Oh,” Brand said, instantly, “I know what you would ask:  ’What is my belief worth?’ ‘How much do I sympathize?’ Well, I can give you a plain answer:  a shilling in the pound income-tax.  If England is this stronghold of the liberties of Europe—­if it is her business to be the lamp-bearer of freedom—­if she must keep her shores inviolate as the refuge of those who are oppressed and persecuted, well, then, I would pay a shilling income-tax, or double that, treble that, to give her a navy that would sweep the seas.  For a big army there is neither population, nor sustenance, nor room; but I would give her such a navy as would let her put the world to defiance.”

“I wish Natalie would teach you to believe in a few other things while she is about it,” said his friend, with a slight and rather sad smile.

“For example?”

“In human nature a little bit, for example.  In the possibility of a woman being something else than a drawing-room peacock, or worse.  Do you think she could make you believe that it is possible for a woman to be noble-minded, unselfish, truth-speaking, modest, and loyal-hearted?”

“I presume you are describing Natalie Lind herself.”

“Oh,” said his friend, with a quick surprise, “then you admit there may be an exception, after all?  You do not condemn the whole race of them now, as being incapable of even understanding what frank dealing is, or honor, or justice, or anything beyond their own vain and selfish caprices?”

George Brand went to the window.

“Perhaps,” said he, “my experience of women has been unfortunate, unusual.  I have not had much chance, especially of late years, of studying them in their quiet domestic spheres.  But otherwise I suppose my experience is not unusual.  Every man begins his life, in his salad days, by believing the world to be a very fine thing, and women particularly to be very wonderful creatures—­angels, in short, of goodness, and mercy, and truth, and all the rest of it.  Then, judging by what I have seen and heard, I should say that about nineteen men out of twenty get a regular facer—­just at the most sensitive period of their life; and then they suddenly believe that women are devils, and the world a delusion.  It is bad logic; but they are not in a mood for reason.  By-and-by the process of recovery begins:  with some short, with others long.  But the spring-time of belief, and hope, and rejoicing—­I doubt whether that ever comes back.”

He spoke without any bitterness.  If the facts of the world were so, they had to be accepted.

“I swallowed my dose of experience a good many years ago,” he continued, “but I haven’t got it out of my blood yet.  However, I will admit to you the possibility of there being a few women like Natalie Lind.”

“Well, this is better, at all events,” Lord Evelyn said, cheerfully.