weakest, to wit. There was something
indescribably horrible in the fiery rush of the sea-demons beneath the
oily blackness of the tropical waters.

"How awful! how truly awful!" murmured Lilith, with a strong shudder of
repulsion, yet gazing as one fascinated at the weird sight.

"Yet it is the perfection of an object lesson, one that comes in just in
time to point the moral to my answer," he said. "If those fish, now in
process of being eaten, were caught and kept in an aquarium tank, it
might be more monotonous for them than furnishing fun and food to the
first comer in the way of bigger fish. Possibly they might yearn for the
excitement of being harried, though I doubt it. That sort of philosophy
is reserved for us humans. If we knock our heads against a brick wall we
howl; if we haven't got a brick wall to knock them against we howl
louder."

"And the moral is?"

"_Dona nobis pacem._"

"I see," she said at last, for it took her a little while to thoroughly
grasp the application, partly distracted as her thinking powers were in
trying to find a deeper meaning than the one intended. "Yet peace is a
thing that no one can enjoy in this world. How should they when the law
of life is struggle--struggle and strife?"

"Precisely. That, however, is due to the faultiness of human nature. The
philosophy of the matter is the same. Its soundness remains untouched."

"Yet you are not consistent. You were implying just now that, failing a
brick wall to knock our heads against, we started in search of one. Now
does not that apply to those who go out into the world--to the other end
of the world--instead of remaining peacefully at home?" she added, a sly
sort of "I-have-you-there" inflection in her tone.

"Pardon me. My consistency is all right. Begging a question will not
shatter it."

"Begging a question?"

"Of course. For present purposes the said begging is comprised in the
word 'peacefully.' See?"

"Ah!"

Again she was silent. The other, watching the flash of the starlight on
the meditative upturned eyes, the clearly marked brows, the firm setting
of the lips, was more conscious than ever of the latent witchery in the
sweet, serene face. He would not flee from its spells now, he decided.
He would meet them boldly, and throw them off, coil for coil, however
subtilely, however dexterously they were wound about him. Meanwhile, two
things had not escaped him: She had yielded the point gracefully, and
convinced, ins