MacLean left the table, and twice walked the length of the room, slowly
and with knitted brows. "If you mean the world-wide order,--the order of
gentlemen,"--he said, coming to a pause with the breadth of the table
between him and Haward, "we may have that ground in common. The rest is
debatable land. I do not take you for a sentimentalist or a redresser of
wrongs. I am your storekeeper, purchased with that same yellow metal of
which you so busily rid yourself; and your storekeeper I shall remain
until the natural death of my term, two years hence. We are not
countrymen; we own different kings; I may once have walked your level
road, but you have never moved in the stony ways; my eyes are blue, while
yours are gray; you love your melting Southern music, and I take no joy
save in the pipes; I dare swear you like the smell of lilies which I
cannot abide, and prefer fair hair in women where I would choose the dark.
There is no likeness between us. Why, then"--

Haward smiled, and drawing two glasses toward him slowly filled them with
wine. "It is true," he said, "that it is not my intention to become a
petitioner for the pardon of a rebel to his serene and German Majesty the
King; true also that I like the fragrance of the lily. I have my fancies.
Say that I am a man of whim, and that, living in a lonely house set in a
Sahara of tobacco fields, it is my whim to desire the acquaintance of the
only gentleman within some miles of me. Say that my fancy hath been caught
by a picture drawn for me a week agone; that, being a philosopher, I play
with the idea that your spirit, knife in hand, walked at my elbow for ten
years, and I knew it not. Say that the idea has for me a curious
fascination. Say, finally, that I plume myself that, given the chance, I
might break down this airy hatred."

He set down the bottle, and pushed one of the brimming glasses across the