Page:The Song of the Sirens.djvu/302

 while I'll love you for it. I know men. You take me for a fool, but you are wrong, all of you. I'm no fool and I care more for the Empire than any man in it. I know whom to appoint and whom to reject. You run a province! You couldn't attend to a rabbit-hutch. You great, bloated, lard-bag, you! you sit like a toad on a mud-bank gaping for flies to blunder into his mouth. You never did anything in your life. Get out and do something.'

"What am I to do?' I asked. 'I want a province and you refuse and then tell me to do something. What am I to do?'

"'Men who do things,' he said, 'don't need to be told what to do, they see things for themselves. If you only once did something I might think of you.'

"'But what,' I insisted.

"'What?' he roared in rage. 'Anything! I'd like to see you spit once as if you really meant it; I could forgive you if you'd up and kick me under the chin, if you thought of it for yourself. Go home,' he said. 'Get out of my sight!' And I went. I don't care about the province, and I don't care whether I please him or not, but I do want to do something to please Fonteia. Only I suppose nothing I could do would please her."

"I believe," said Proculus, "that she is much