ome
within the sphere of my influence."

"You are likely," Aynesworth remarked, "to achieve popularity."

Wingrave regarded him steadfastly.

"Your speech," he said, "is flippant, but you yourself do not realize
how near it comes to the truth. Human beings are like dogs--they are
always ready to lick the hand that flogs them. I mean to use the scourge
whenever I can seize the opportunity, but you will find the jackals at
my heels, nevertheless, whenever I choose to whistle."

Aynesworth helped himself to a liqueur. He felt that he needed it.

"One weakness alone distresses me," Wingrave continued. "In all ordinary
matters of sentiment I am simply a negation. There is one antipathy,
however, which I find it hard to overcome. The very sight of a woman, or
the sound of her voice, distresses me. This is the more unfortunate," he
continued, "because it is upon the shoulders of her sex that the greater
portion of my debt to my fellow creatures rests. However, time may help
me!"

Aynesworth leaned back in his chair, and contemplated his companion for
the next few moments in thoughtful silence. It was hard, he felt, to
take a man who talked like this seriously. His manner was convincing,
his speech deliberate and assured. There was not the slightest doubt but
that he meant what he said, yet it seemed to Aynesworth equally certain
that the time would come, and come quickly, when the unnatural hardness
of the man would yield to the genial influence of friendship, of
pleasure, of the subtle joys of freedom. Those past days of hideous
monotony, of profitless, debasing toil, the long, sleepless nights, the
very nightmare of life to a man of Wingrave's culture and habits, might
well have poisoned his soul, have filled him with ideas such as these.
But everything was different now! The history of the world could show
no epoch when pleasures so many and various were there for the man who
carries the golden key. Today he was a looker-on, and the ice of his
years of bitterness had not melted. Tomorrow, at any moment, he might
catch a whiff of the fragrance of life, and the blood in his veins would
move to a different tune. This was how it seemed to Aynesworth, as he
studied his companion through the faint blue mist of tobacco smoke.

"This expression of your sentiments," he remarked at last, "is
interesting so far as it goes. I am, however, a practical person, and
my connection with you is of a practical order. You don't propose,