There are other girls too—one an insinuating tiny minx, who would wheedle a backward glance out of Simon Stylites as he remounted his pillar—and, by the sun in heaven, will get little more from this child of Mother Earth! There's another, I hear—Irish!—And[Pg 92] Irish is near my heart. But behind her—set in the uncertain radiance of my imagination—lies her Excellency. Heaven knows why! Save that it is gloriously paradoxical to meet a foreign Excellency in this spot, and to get to most justifiable, most delightful, loggerheads with her immediately. I have conceived Machiavellian devices. I will lure away her friends. I will isolate her, humiliate her, beat her in the fight. There may be some black eyes—some bruised hearts—but I shall do it. Why? I have always been gentle before. But so I feel toward her. And therefore I am afraid. This is the foeman for my steel, I think—I have my doubts but that she'll beat me in the end.

[Pg 92]

"When I talk like this, Cromlech chuckles, loves me as a show, despises me as a mind. Roger—young Roger Fitz-Archdeacon[Pg 93]—is all an incredulous amazement. I don't wonder. There is nothing so small and nothing so great—nothing so primitive and not a thing so complex—nothing so unimportant and so engrossing as this 'duel of the sexes.' A proves it a trifle, and is held great. B reckons it all-supreme, and becomes popular. C (a woman) describes the Hunter Man. D (a man) descants of the Pursuit by Woman. The oldest thing is the most canvassed and the least comprehended. But there's a reputation—and I suppose money—in it for anybody who can string phrases. There's blood-red excitement for everybody who can feel. Yet I've played my part in other affairs—not so much in dull old England, where you work five years to become a Member of Parliament, and five years more in order to get kicked out again—but in places where in a night you rise or[Pg 94] fall—in five minutes order the shooting-squad or face it—boil the cook or are stuffed into the pot yourself. (Cromlech, this is not exact scientific statement!) Yet always—everywhere—the woman! And why? On my honor, I don't know. What in the end is she?

[Pg 93]

[Pg 94]

"I adjourn the question—and put a broader one. What am I? The human being as such? If I'm a vegetable, am I not a mistake? If I'm an animal, am I not a cruelty? If I'm a soul, am I not misplaced? I'd say 'Yes' to all this, save that I enjoy myself so much. Because I have forty thousand a year? Hardly. I've had nothing, and been as completely out of reach of getting anything as 

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