plaudits of a fool-public. And love!--love does not exist--not what
_I_ call love!"

"Oh! May I have your definition?"

"Why yes!--of course you may! Love, to my thinking, means complete
harmony between two souls--like two notes that make a perfect chord.
The man must feel that he can thoroughly trust and reverence the
woman,--the woman must feel the same towards the man. And the sense
of 'reverence' is perhaps the best and most binding quality. But
nowadays what woman will you find worth reverence?--what man so free
from drink and debauchery as to command it? The human beings of our
day are often less respectable than the beasts! I can imagine love,-
-what it might be--what it should be--but till we have a very
different and more spiritualised world, the thing is impossible."

Again, Gwent was silent for some minutes. Then he said--

"Apparently the spirit of destructiveness is strong in you. As
'master of the world'--to quote your own words, I presume that in
the event of a nation or nations deciding on war, you would give
them a time-limit to consider and hold conference, with their
allies--and then--if they were resolved to begin hostilities--"

"Then I could--and WOULD--wipe them off the face of the earth in
twenty-four hours!" said Seaton, calmly--"From nations they should
become mere dust-heaps! War makes its own dust-heaps, but with
infinitely more cost and trouble--the way of exit I offer would be
cheap in comparison!"