"Why, my dear fellow, you would like me less if I were changed from what you call the beast of prey to such a house-dog as are most of your acquaintances. I refresh you in a life of drab monotony, because of my outspoken repudiation of things that life's copy-cats accept without thought or demurrer. I interest you because, though I am educated and disreputably rich, I remain at heart a savage--because I like to break away from the tawdry glitter of social pretense and run baying joyously at the head of the wild pack. And, in fairness, you must admit that when I revert to feral instincts I don't have to ask odds as an amateur." The great fellow came abruptly to his feet, not with the ponderousness of most giants, but with a panther-like agility and smoothness. "I am idle--yes--so far as it is idle for a man to refuse to go on despoiling weaker men for gain--but why not? I can spend a fortune every year for a long life-span, and still leave loot a-plenty behind my taking off. Yet, my idling is not mere slothfulness. I know the Orient, not as the ordinary white man knows it, but as one who has become a brother to the yellow and brown. I know these hills. No man in this town to-night, save yourself, suspects that I am not native--or even that I have ever participated in any other life." "All of which I admit. The wolf may be more interesting than the collie--but for the sheepfold the collie is safer. I'm thinking of Alexander." Halloway reflectively knocked the nub of ash from his pipe, and went on more slowly. "Civilization stifles me," he said seriously. "But when I turn my back on its dusty theologues and dogmatists, I still hold tight to the poets. To me feeling means much, but cold thought is like a fireless hearth." The speaker was standing before the frame of the dark window. The wild capriciousness of the weather had brought rain and flashes of untimely lightning flared now and again into momentary whiteness. Brent looked at the mighty proportion of his companion and thought of the girl who slept in another tawdry room opening on the same narrow hallway. Each of them was unusual; each of them insurgent; each without fear. If their two natures should strike the spark of attraction, he trembled to think of what a conflagration might blaze from the kindling. "I'm not discussing theories," he said a bit shortly. "I'm talking about a mountain girl whom I take it you would never marry--and if not----" He spread his hands and left the sentence unfinished. "And if not?" Halloway caught him up. "What has marriage necessarily to do with love? There is more honesty and stimulation in the life-story of any _grande amoureuse_ than a dozen of your stodgy fraus." "I'm going to bed," declared Will Brent. "But--leave Alexander alone. I don't think she'd see eye to eye with you on the subject of the _grande amoureuse_." "That only foreshadows a duel of wills--conflict--drama."