on and down and around and out of the loop. But
he refused the will and the heart, and every time, when he was unable at
the beginning to leap sideways out of the inclined trough, he fell
grievously from the inside of the loop, bruising and injuring himself.

"It isn't that I expect these things are what Harry had in mind," Collins
would say, for always he was training his assistants; "but that through
them I may get a cue to his specially, whatever in God's name it is, that
poor Harry must have known."

Out of love, at the wish of his love-god, Steward, Michael would have
striven to learn these tricks and in most of them would have succeeded.
But here at Cedarwild was no love, and his own thoroughbred nature made
him stubbornly refuse to do under compulsion what he would gladly have
done out of love. As a result, since Collins was no thoroughbred of a
man, the clashes between them were for a time frequent and savage. In
this fighting Michael quickly learned he had no chance. He was always
doomed to defeat. He was beaten by stereotyped formula before he began.
Never once could he get his teeth into Collins or Johnny. He was too
common-sensed to keep up the battling in which he would surely have
broken his heart and his body and gone dumb mad. Instead, he retired
into himself, became sullen, undemonstrative, and, though he never
cowered in defeat, and though he was always ready to snarl and bristle
his hair in advertisement that inside he was himself and unconquered, he
no longer burst out in furious anger.

After a time, scarcely ever trying him out on a new trick, the chain and
Johnny were dispensed with, and with Collins he spent all Collins's hours
in the arena. He learned, by bitter lessons, that he must follow Collins
around; and follow him he did, hating him perpetually and in his own body
slowly and subtly poisoning himself by the juices of his glands that did
not secrete and flow in quite their normal way because of the pressure
put upon them by his hatred.

The effect of this, on his body, was not perceptible. This was because
of his splendid constitution and health. Wherefore, since the effect
must be produced somewhere, it was his mind, or spirit, or nature, or
brain, or processes of consciousness, that received it. He drew more and
more within himself, became morose, and brooded much. All of which was
spiritually unhealthful. He, who had been so merry-hearted, even merrier-
hearted than his