Mesurier was an adherent of the rightful king.
"Oh, of course!" said Henry.
"And do you belong to any secret society?" asked the little man.
Henry couldn't say that he did.
"Well, you must join us!" he said.
"I suppose there won't be a rising just yet?" asked Henry, realising
that this was the Jacobite method.
"Not just yet," said the little man, reassuringly. So Henry was
enrolled.
* * * * *
And so it went on till past midnight, when Henry at last escaped, to
talk it all over with the stars. The evening had naturally puzzled him,
as a man will always be puzzled who has developed under the influence of
the main tendencies of his generation, and who finds himself suddenly in
a backwater of fanciful reaction. Henry, in his simple way, was a
thinker and a radical, and he had nourished himself on the great
main-road masters of English literature. He had followed the lead of
modern philosophers and scientists, and had arrived at a mystical
agnosticism,--the first step of which was to banish the dogmas of the
church as old wives' tales.
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