him for a moment curiously.

"But why," he said at length, "why won't you trust me to bring it
precisely that way?"

Osmond smiled faintly.

"No," he said, "you couldn't."

"But why? You say I am extremely powerful. You rather accuse me of it. I
am too powerful, in fact. Wasn't that what you said?"

"Yes."

"Well, why not trust me to administer your great awakening?"

Osmond kept his ironic smile of unbelief.

"You are not the man," he said. "You would not believe in it. You
wouldn't live it. You are very powerful. But your mastery wouldn't serve
you. That's where you can't pretend."

"Now where have you got your idea of me?" MacLeod was looking at him
sharply. "You never saw me before to-day. Yet your idea was already
formed before I came down here. Who's been talking to you?"

Osmond had entrenched himself at last in his customary reserve.

"You are a public character," he said indifferently.

"Has Peter been talking about me?"

"Yes. He speaks of you."

"But not in this fashion. Peter believes in me, over head and ears."

"Yes. He believes in you. I wish he didn't."

"Ah!" MacLeod drew a deep breath. "My daughter! Do you know my
daughter?"

The question was too quick, and Osmond quivered under the assault of it.
He felt the blood in his face. His heart choked him. And MacLeod's eyes
were upon him.

"Do you know her?" MacLeod was asking sharply.

"Yes," Osmond heard himself answering, in a moved voice. "I have seen
her."

MacLeod spoke with what seemed to the other man an insulting emphasis.
Yet Osmond had not time to calm himself by the reminder that he was not
used to hearing Rose spoken of at all as mortal woman. In his dreams she
was something more than that.

"My daughter," MacLeod was saying, "has an intemperate habit of speech.
If she has talked me over with you, she has inevitably made your
opinions. For Rose is a very beautiful woman. I needn't tell you that."

Then something strange happened to Osmond. He experienced a sensation
which he had accepted as a form of words, and had only idly believed in.
He saw red. A rush and surge were in his ears. And as if it were a
signal, known once but ignored through years of tranquil living, he as
instantly obeyed. He was on his feet, his fists clenched, and MacLeod,
also risen, was regarding him with concern and even, Osmond thought in
fury, with compassion. The red deepened into black and Osmond felt the
suffocation and nausea of a weakne