, go back to your own country, the one you were born
in, and love that, for God's sake." He judged he had said enough to be
carried in the interpreter's memory, and turned upon him. "Go on," said
he imperatively. "Say it."

But even then he had no idea what the man would do. The atmosphere about
them was not thrilling in responsive sympathy. Silence had waited upon
Moore, and this, Jeff could not help feeling, was silence of a different
species. But the interpreter did, slowly and cautiously, it seemed,
convey his words. At least Jeff hoped he was conveying them. When his
voice ceased, Jeff took up the thread.

"He tells you you've no country. He says your country is the world.
You're not big enough to need the whole world for your country. I'm not
big enough. Only a few of them are, the prophets and the great dead men
he thinks so little of. Dig up a tract of ground and call it your
country and make it grow and bloom and have good laws--why, you fools!"
His patience broke. "You fools, you're being done. You're being led away
and played upon. A man's country isn't the spot where he can get the
best money to put into his belly. His country is his country, just as
his mother is his mother. He can worship the Virgin Mary, but he loves
his mother best."

Whether the name hit them like blasphemy, whether the interpreter caught
fire from it or Moore gave a signal, he could not tell. But suddenly he
was being hustled. He was pulled down from the car with a gentle yet
relentless force, was conscious that he was being removed and must
submit. There were sounds now, the quick syllables of the southern
races, half articulate to the uninstructed ear but full of idiom and
passion, and through his own silent struggle he was aware that the
interpreter was soothing, directing, and inexorably guiding the assault.
They took him, a resistless posse of them, beyond the gap, and the
automobile followed slowly and passed him just outside. It halted, and
Moore addressed him hesitatingly:

"I could take you back to town."

Moore didn't want to say this, but he remembered Miss Amabel and the two
charming girls, all adoring Jeff, and his ever-present control bade him
be civilised. Jeff did not answer. He was full of a choking rage and
blind desire for them to get their hands off him. Not in his
imprisonment even had he felt such debasement under control as when
these lithe creatures hurried him along. Yet he knew then that his rage
was not