I understood suddenly why I loved him so, this tall, gray man with the delicate, almost grotesque, mannerisms.

He appealed to me by sheer force of picturesqueness, appealed as some forgotten mediaeval city might.

I was concerned for him as for some such dying place, standing above the level plains; I was jealous lest it should lose one jot of its glory, of its renown.

He advocated his saner policy before all those people; stood up there and spoke gently, persuasively, without any stress of emotion, without more movement than an occasional flutter of the glasses he held in his hand.

One would never have recognised that the thing was a fighting speech but for the occasional shiver of his audience.