"And bear this in mind for your own guidance." He took a step forward, which brought his face quite close to hers: "If he fails, and all his life's work goes for nothing, I shall be sorry; but I shan't break my heart.

He will." Joan dropped a note into Phillips's letter-box on her return home, saying briefly that she wished to see him; and he sent up answer asking her if she would come to the gallery that evening, and meet him after his speech, which would be immediately following the dinner hour.
It was the first time he had risen since his appointment, and he was received with general cheers.

He stood out curiously youthful against the background of grey-haired and bald-headed men behind him; and there was youth also in his clear, ringing voice that not even the vault-like atmosphere of that shadowless chamber could altogether rob of its vitality.

He spoke simply and good-humouredly, without any attempt at rhetoric, relying chiefly upon a crescendo of telling facts that gradually, as he proceeded, roused the House to that tense stillness that comes to it when it begins to think.
"A distinctly dangerous man," Joan overheard a little old lady behind her comment to a friend.

"If I didn't hate him, I should like him." He met her in the corridor, and they walked up and down and talked, too absorbed to be aware of the curious eyes that were turned upon them.