t isn't so very
difficult."

"No," said Burnaby, "I can't guess at all."

"Well, then, listen." And to Mrs. Malcolm it seemed as if Sir John had
grown larger, had merged in the shadows about him; at least he gave that
impression, for he sat up very straight and threw back his shoulders.
For a moment he hesitated, then he began, "You must go back to the
dinner I was describing," he said--"the dinner in London. I too was
intrigued as you are, and when it was over I followed Morton out and
walked with him toward his club. And, like you, I asked the question. I
think that he had known all along that I suspected; at all events, it is
characteristic of the man that he did not try to bluff me. He walked on
for a little while in silence, and then he laughed abruptly. 'Yes,' he
said, 'I'll tell you. Yes. Just this. What there is to be got, I've got;
what work can win I've won; but back of it all there's something else,
and back even of that there's a careless god who gives his gifts where
they are least deserved. That's one reason why I talked as I did
to-night. To all of us--the men like me--there comes in the end a time
when we realize that what a man can do we can do, but that love, the
touch of other people's minds, these two things are the gifts of the
careless god. And it irritates us, I suppose, irritates us! We want them
in a way that the ordinary man who has them cannot understand. We want
them as damned souls in hell want water. And sometimes the strain's too
much. It was to-night. To touch other minds, even for a moment, even if
they hate you while you are doing it, that's the thing! To lay yourself,
just once, bare to the gaze of ordinary people! With the hope, perhaps,
that even then they may still find in you something to admire or love.
Self-revelation! Every man confesses sometime. It happened that I chose
a dinner party. Do you understand?'" It was almost as if Sir John
himself had asked the question.

"And then"--he was speaking in his usual calm tones again--"there
happened a curious thing, a very curious thing, for Morton stopped and
turned toward me and began to laugh. I thought he would never stop. It
was rather uncanny, under the street lamp there, this usually rather
quiet man. 'And that,' he said at length, 'that's only half the story.
The cream of it is this: the way I myself felt, sitting there among all
those soft, easily lived people. That's the cream of it. To flout them,
to sting them, to laugh