Page:The leopard's spots - a romance of the white man's burden-1865-1900 (IA leopardsspotsrom00dixo).pdf/354

 your soul, fall back at last and give up to the will of your master. This too, when you hold in your simple will the key that would unlock your prison door and make you free. It's a pitiful sight."

"How shrewd a tempter!"

"There you are again. He who dares to tell you that you are of yourself a living human being, divinely free, is a tempter from the devil. You are thinking about eternity. Well, now is eternity. Live, stand erect, take a deep breath, and dare to be yourself and do what you please. That is what I do. The future is a myth."

"Yes, I know the freedom of which you boast," she quietly observed, "it is the freedom of lust. The return to nature you dream of is simply the fall downward into the dirt out of which a rational and spiritual manhood has grown. I feel and know this in spite of your handsome face and the fine ring of your voice."

"Dirt. Dirt!" he mused. "Yes, I was in the dirt once, was born in it, the dirt of poverty and superstition and fears of laws here and hereafter. But I awoke at last, and shook it off, washed myself in knowledge and stood erect. I am a man now, with the eye of a king, conscious of my power. I look a lying hypocritical world in the face. I have made up my mind to live my own life in spite of fools, and in spite of the laws and conventions of fools."

"And yet I believe you carry a horse-chestnut in your pocket, and will not undertake an important work on Friday?" she returned.

"But I never strangle a normal impulse of my nature that I can satisfy. I am not that big a fool, at least."

She was silent, and then said, "I can never thank you enough for the book you sent me."

McLeod sighed in relief at her change of tone. After all she was just tantalising him!