p into an
imperative law--something you must obey."

The man smiled and nodded approvingly: "You've got me down fine," he
said.

"I talk with a good deal of confidence," she went on, with a cheerless,
ruminative little laugh, "because it is my own organization that I am
describing, too. The difference is that I was allowed to exploit my
capacity for mischief very early. I had my own way in my teens--my own
money, my own power--of course only of a certain sort, and in a very
small place. But I know what I did with that power. I spread trouble
and misery about me--always of course on a small scale. Then a group of
things happened in a kind of climax--a very painful climax--and it
shook the nonsense out of me. My brother and my father died--some other
sobering things happened...and luckily I was still young enough to stop
short, and take stock of myself, and say that there were certain paths
I would never set foot on again--and stick to it. But with you--do you
see?--power only comes to you when you are a mature man. Experiences, no
matter how unpleasant they are, will not change you now. You will not
be moved by this occurrence or that to distrust yourself, or reconsider
your methods, or form new resolutions. Oh no! Power will be terrible
in your hands, if people whom you can injure provoke you to cruel
courses----"

"Oh, dear--dear!" broke in Lady Cressage. "What a distressing Mrs.
Gummidge-Cassandra you are, Celia! Pray stop it!"

"No--she's right enough," said Thorpe, gravely. "That's the kind of man
I am."

He seemed so profoundly interested in the contemplation of this portrait
which had been drawn of him, that the others respected his reflective
silence. He sat for some moments, idly fingering a fork on the table,
and staring at a blotch of vivid red projected through a decanter upon
the cloth.

"It seems to me that's the only kind of man it's worth while to be,"
he added at last, still speaking with thoughtful deliberation. "There's
nothing else in the world so big as power--strength. If you have that,
you can get everything else. But if you have it, and don't use it, then
it rusts and decays on your hands. It's like a thoroughbred horse. You
can't keep it idle in the stable. If you don't exercise it, you lose
it."

He appeared to be commenting upon some illustration which had occurred
to his own mind, but was not visible to his auditors. While they
regarded him, he was prompted to admit them to his confi