If England could only wake up as England again, what a wonderful thing it would be!" "It would," said Lady Chudley.

"And you would like to be the awakener ?" "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.