wo sorts of
selfishness, one not quite so narrow as the other; but--I've got to stay
here."

Fair, after a short silence, asked if this was his only reason.

"Only reason? Why--why, yes, that's my only reason! To be sure, there's
a sense in which--why, conscience! isn't it enough? O! of course, I
could _think up_ other considerations, but they're not reasons--I don't
allow them to bias me at all! Fact is, I was never before quite so
foot-free. Why did you ask? Did you fancy I might be contemplating
marriage? O, go 'long! why, my good gracious, Fair, I--it's an honest
fact--I haven't even _been to see_ one marriageable girl since I came
back from Europe! No, the reason I give is _the_ reason. It covers
everything else.

"O! if you are thinking of debts, I could cancel them at least as fast
if I went as if I stayed. They're not large, the money debts. O! no;
it's--Fair--I spent a year in Europe coaxing men to leave their
mother-country for better wages in this. Of course, that was all right.
But it brought one thing to my notice: that when our value is not mere
wages, it isn't every man who's got the unqualified right to pick up and
put out just whenever he gets ready. Look out that window. There's the
college where for five years I got my education--at half price!--and
with money borrowed here in Suez! Look out this one. Mr. Fair, right
down there in those streets truth and justice are lying wounded and
half-dead, and the public conscience is being drugged! We Southerners,
Fair, don't believe one man's as good as another; we think one man in
his right place is worth a thousand who can't fill it. My place is
here!--No! let me finish; I'm not fatigued at all! How I'm to meet this
issue God only knows, but who'll even try to do it if I don't?
Halliday's too far off. Ravenel looks on as silent as a gallows!
Proudfit--poor old Proudfit hasn't been sober since the day he got home.
Father Tombs has grown timid and slow-sighted, and the whole people,
Fair, the whole people! have let themselves be seduced in the purse and
are this day betrayed as foully in their fortunes as in their souls!"
The speaker ended in a high key. He was trembling with nervous
exhaustion. In an effort to jerk higher in the pillow his knee struck
the tray, the crockery slid and crashed, and Johanna found him in the
middle of the room, fiercely shaking the skirt of his dressing-gown.

"O! never mind me; get the milk out of the bed!"

She saw how over