books. Dalrymple observed, indeed, that
Griggs was more inclined to talk in his own rooms than anywhere else,
and that his manner then changed so much as to make him almost seem to
be a different man. There was a look of interest in the stony mask, and
there was a light in the deep-set eyes which neither wine nor wit could
bring there at other times. The man wore his armour against the world,
as it were, a tough shell made up of a poor man's pride, and solid with
that sense of absolute physical superiority which is an element in the
character of strong men, and which the Scotchman understood. He himself
had been of the strong, but not always the strongest. Paul Griggs had
never yet been matched by any man since he had first got his growth. He
was the equal of many in intellect, but his bodily strength was not
equalled by any in his youth and manhood. The secret of his one
well-hidden vanity lay in that. His moral power showed itself in his
assumed modesty about it, for it was almost impossible to prevail upon
him to make exhibition of it. Gloria alone seemed able to induce him,
for her especial amusement, to break a silver dollar with his fingers,
or tear a pack of cards, and then only in the presence of her father or
Reanda, but never before other people.

"You are the strongest man in the world, are you not?" she asked him
once.

"Yes," he answered. "I probably am, if it is I. I am vain of it, but not
proud of it. That makes me think sometimes that I am two men in one.
That might account for it, you know."

"What nonsense!" Gloria laughed.

"Is it? I daresay it is." And he relapsed into indifference, so far as
she could see.

"What is the other man like?" she asked. "Not the strong man of the two,
but the other?"

"He is a good man. The strong man is bad. They fight, and the result is
insignificance. Some day one of the two will get the better of the
other."

"What will happen then?" she asked lightly, and still inclined to laugh.

"One or the other, or both, will die, I suppose," he answered.

"How very unpleasant!"

She did not at all understand what he meant. At the same time she could
not help feeling that he was eminently a man to whom she would turn in
danger or trouble. Girl though she was, she could not mistake his great
admiration of her, and by degrees, as the winter wore on, she trusted
him more, though he still repelled her a little, for his saturnine calm
was opposed to her violent vitality,