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René listened in growing amazement. Did Percy mean that if he had the guts he would denounce the villanies of the great Insurance Companies?

Did he regard himself as a village Hampden manqué? Apparently his amazing brother-in-law derived pleasure from imagining a day when he would return as usual from his office, kiss his wife, and announce that they at once must pack: that he was saying good-bye to Insurance, that he was selling his houses, cars, and so on, dismissing the servants and that in future they would dwell in a three-room flat in Pimlico or Shepherd's Bush. René had often speculated as to what effect a life-long diet of revolutionary journalism might have upon a highly successful executive. It now was obvious that Marxism was simply transmuted into romance, into British Dare-to-be-a-Danielism. As to whether Percy understood, or indeed took the faintest interest in what precisely were the principles behind his brother-in-law's unworldly action, René could only guess. He supposed that in a woolly way the good Percy labelled as 'idealism' any defiance of an established order, or institutions: 'idealism' being the word traditionally favoured by the revolutionary journalist for the impulse in the moral man to devote himself to the welfare of men-in-general. Clearly Percy's reaction would be just to affix the label 'idealism', without going further into the matter. He never went behind words or underneath clichés or slogans. Since they had never had any really serious talk, his brother-in-law could not be otherwise than quite ignorant of what René's beliefs were.