orn. "If
any one should feel called upon to make explanations and apologies,
Hamilton, it is yourself ... after what we have just heard. It was
monstrous." She shuddered.

Hamilton refused to be turned aside. In a tense voice he demanded of the
girl's fiance: "Do you add your self-righteous approval to that
sentiment?"

A sense of being intolerably bullied seized Edwardes and made red spots
of anger dance before his eyes. His fists clenched and he took a forward
step, then with tensed muscles he halted and stood there so close to the
other that their eyes locked at a range of inches. Very deliberately he
inquired: "Are you determined to force me into a quarrel, Burton? I'm
seeking to avoid it."

"I am asking you a question and I demand an answer."

Edwardes' voice rang out passionately. "I am no prig who supplies
unasked codes of conduct to others--even when they need it as badly as
you do. But since you ask--yes, I agree fully, and I add this to boot.
You are the most appallingly irresponsible man whose hands have ever
grasped power. You are maddened with egotism until you are a more
malignant pestilence than famine or flame. Now you have asked my opinion
and in part you have it."

For an instant Mary Burton thought her brother would spring upon her
lover in a tigerish abandon of fury, and she knew from the fighting
flame in the other's eyes that he would be met half-way. Paul had
dropped into a chair, where he sat as one stunned.

Burton returned the gaze which had never dropped from its inflexible
directness; and his own voice was changed to a key of satirical quiet.

"If I am all the things you charge," he suggested, "it's a pretty full
indictment and may warrant some discussion in passing. Paul," he added
with a curt gesture of dismissal, "I hardly think this conversation will
amuse you." The younger Burton rose and left the room, and as he went
Mary took her place at the side of the man she had promised to marry and
stood there as straight and unflinching as himself.

"Mr. Edwardes," Hamilton began, "years ago I was a country boy, not yet
fully able to translate the voices that spoke to me from within: voices
that told me I was a son of Destiny. In a fashion, I owe you something
as an interpreter of those voices. You have just spoken more bitterly
than it is easy for me to forgive. Yet, I am anxious to talk
temperately--and God knows it will require an effort. Will you meet me
half-way?"

Jefferson Edw