the room. The three sat around it.... Peter Mowbray felt strange and
young beside them. The woman seemed to belong to this world, and it
was a world at war with every existing power. All Peter's training
resisted stubbornly. Still, right or wrong, there was a nobility about
their stand. He did not need to be sure their vision was absolutely
true, yet the suspicion developed that they saw more clearly than he,
and acted more purely. Mowbray did not lack anything of valor, but he
lacked the fire somehow. He loved Berthe Solwicz, could have made
every sacrifice for her, but that was a concrete thing.

Fallow's bony knees were close to the fire. He seemed both light and
deep, often turning to Peter with secret intentness, and openly
regarding the young woman with amazement and delight. Nearing fifty,
Fallows was tall, thin and tanned. The deep lines of his face were
those which make a man look homely to himself, but often interesting
to others. His soft, low-collared shirt was somewhat of a spectacle in
consideration of the angular and weathered neck. No rest could exist
in the room that contained such loneliness as burned from his eyes. It
was said that he had been rich, though everything about him was poor
now. One would suspect the articles in his pockets to be meager and of
poor quality--the things you might find in a peasant's coat. That
which he called home was a peasant's house in the Bosk hills--the
house of the plowman of Liaoyang, whose children he fathered.
Annually, however, he went abroad, telling the story of the underdog,
usually making the big circuit from the East to the West, and stopping
at a certain little cabin within hearing distance of the whistles of
Manhattan, where his first disciple worked in solitude mainly, and
against the stream. Just now Fallows was planning a different winter's
work.... They talked of the first fighting.