The Dean, with his keen sense for the dramatic, watched
the meeting between him and Cliffe with some closeness, having in mind
the almost personal duel between the two men--a duel of letters,
telegrams, or speeches, which had been lately carried on in the sight of
Europe and America. For Ashe now represented the Foreign Office in the
House of Commons, and had been much badgered by the Tory extremists who
followed Cliffe.
Naturally, being Englishmen, they met as though nothing had happened and
they had parted the day before in Pall Mall. A "Hullo, Ashe!" and
"Hullo, Cliffe! glad to see you back again," completed the matter. The
Dean enjoyed it as a specimen of English "phlegm," recalling with
amusement his last visit to the Paris of the Second Empire--Paris torn
between government and opposition, the
salons of the one divided from
the
salons of the other by a sulphurous gulf, unless when some Lazarus
of the moment, some well-known novelist or poet, cradled in the
Abraham's bosom of Liberalism, passed amid shrieks of triumph or howls
of treason into the official inferno.
Not that there was any avoiding of topics in this English case.
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