"Am I not serious about my anarchism?" cried Gregory, with knotted
fists.

"My dear fellow!" said Syme, and strolled away.

With surprise, but with a curious pleasure, he found Rosamond
Gregory still in his company.

"Mr. Syme," she said, "do the people who talk like you and my
brother often mean what they say? Do you mean what you say now?"

Syme smiled.

"Do you?" he asked.

"What do you mean?" asked the girl, with grave eyes.

"My dear Miss Gregory," said Syme gently, "there are many kinds of
sincerity and insincerity. When you say 'thank you' for the salt,
do you mean what you say? No. When you say 'the world is round,'
do you mean what you say? No. It is true, but you don't mean it.
Now, sometimes a man like your brother really finds a thing he does
mean. It may be only a half-truth, quarter-truth, tenth-truth; but
then he says more than he means--from sheer force of meaning it."

She was looking at him from under level brows; her face was grave
and open, and there had fallen upon it the shadow of that
unreasoning responsibility which is at the bottom of the most
frivolous woman, the maternal watch which is as old as the world.