MacLeod was regarding him with as direct a gaze.

"What do you mean by that?" he asked, with a moderate interest. "Do you
mean I haven't any mercy, any kindness? Is that what you mean?"

It was not what he meant. It was the indwelling spirit such as he saw in
grannie, the mobile thing in Peter that, changing, blossoming in errant
will here and there as the sun of life bade it, seemed in one form or
another to proclaim itself undying. He shook his head.

"No," he said, "that's not what I mean."

A smile ran over MacLeod's face and moved it most delightfully.

"Well," said he, "if we're going to take inventories--have you a soul?"

Osmond shook his head again.

"I don't know," he answered.

"Well, then, what's the use of slanging me? If you're in the same box
yourself--Come, who has one? has anybody?"

Osmond thought then of Rose, and of the fire of the spirit playing over
her, that brightness he could neither classify nor define. Yet he must
believe in it.

"Yes," he said. "I have seen it."

"You have? And you think I'm exempt. Why?"

Osmond was not getting anywhere. MacLeod and his own ineptitude of
speech seemed to be forcing him into the solicitous fright of the
mother, bent on shielding her child from the wolf.

"You are too powerful," he said, and realized that he was using the
evidence Rose had given him, thought for thought.

"I hope so. I ought to be. I've got to overturn power."

"What's the use? You're a czar yourself. You're only another kind."

MacLeod looked at him thoughtfully, as if struck by the form of words.

"My dear fellow," he said, "is it possible you believe in the present
state of things? Do you want one man to possess everything and the next
man nothing?"

Osmond frowned his negation. MacLeod, unfairly it seemed to him, made
him feel young and inadequate to the matter. He had the eyes to see what
cause was just, yet he had not the equipment to maintain any cause at
all.

"What is the use," he essayed, "for you and men like you to head
revolts? It only means you are ruling instead of the rulers you
overturn. It will all be done over again. The big man will rise to the
top. The little man will go under. And in time you will have the same
conditions repeated. It's because you are not teaching love. You are
teaching envy and hate."

"How do you know I am?"

Osmond kept on as if he were speaking to himself, groping painfully for
what he found.

"You are not preaching go