of one who
realizes he is dealing with a person of limited intelligence.

"You mean we believe in what we have cognition of," he amended in a
harsh tone. "No doubt you are right. But your captain may have had
beliefs and fidelities beyond your cognition. Perhaps he saw, suddenly,
as in a flash, you understand, the ultimate futility of existence. He
might. Englishmen don't as a rule. But if he had lived in the East a
long while, he might."

"But surely you don't advance that as a tenable hypothesis," exclaimed
Mr. Marsh. This man, who had contrived to retain the illusions and
metaphysics of the comfortably fixed classes of England amid the
magnificent scenery and human squalor of Ottoman life, was frankly
appalled by the young man's ferocious gaiety while he advanced what he
called his theory of philosophic nihilism. That was the disconcerting
feature of the affair. This Herr Leutnant Lietherthal actually spoke
with pleasure of a time when humanity should have ceased to exist! Mr.
Marsh would almost have preferred a technical enemy to desire the
extinction of Englishmen. It was more logical, and he said as much as
they adjourned to a smaller room to supper.

"Oh, don't I?" exclaimed the Herr Leutnant, holding up his glass of
Kuemmel. That was his way of being revenged upon the country where he had
lived many happy years. At Oxford, whither the munificence of Rhodes
brought him, his sensuous mind had delighted in the apparently opposed
but really identical studies of philosophy and philology. Following the
example of his tutor at Leipzig, he had often neglected classrooms in
his studies in English, and gone into the slums of great towns and on
the dock-sides of London and Liverpool for idioms. And he got them. "Oh,
don't I?" he exclaimed, laughing, and added: "I go the whole hog, my
friend." And only that subtle under-twang, that strong humming of the
vocal chords in his vowels remained to detect him. He was addicted to
saying that he had discovered the secret of the English power, which
was, he announced, their mongrel origin. "A nation of mongrels who think
of nothing but thoroughbred horses and dogs," he had described them to
Evanthia, who could not possibly gauge the accuracy of the sentence.
Just now, as he set down his glass, he added that he went "the whole
hog, my friend, as your graceful English expresses it." And then, in
reply to Mr. Marsh's shocked comment, he said:

"Why? It would be of no advantage to d