“You meant to leave us yourself, but to let your money go as alms to the revolutionaries?” cried Spears, with a thrill of agitation in his voice which seemed to make the room ring. “Yes, I suppose you might have fallen among people who would have permitted it. (The strange thing was that most of the members of the society had been of this opinion, and that it was all that Spears could do to rescue the money which the others thought lawfully forfeited.) But we are not of that kind. We don’t want filthy money with the man away, or even with his heart away.” The orator held his head high; there was a certain scorn about his gestures, about his mouth. He tried to show by a careless smile and air that what he was doing was of no importance, an easy and certain step of which there could be no doubt; but the thrill of excited feeling in him could not be got out of his voice. And Paul, perhaps, had even more excuse for excitement. “I will not take a farthing of the money,” he said. “Then you will carry it back yourself, my lad. I have washed my hands of it. If you think I will permit a penny of yours to go into our treasury apart from yourself and your sympathy and your help! I would have taken all that and welcome. I have told you already--to little use--what you were to me, Paul Markham. The Bible is right after all about idols, though many is the word I’ve spoken against it. I made an idol of you, and lo! my image is broken into a thousand pieces. It is like giving the thing a kick the more,” he said, with a sudden burst of harsh laughter, “to think when it was all over and ended that I would take the money! It shows how much you knew me.” “Then it is a mere matter of personal offence and disappointment, Spears?” “Offence!” he cried. “Yes, offence if you like the word--as it is offence when your friend puts a knife into you. The first thing you feel is surprise. Who could believe it? He! to stab you, when you were leaning upon him. It takes all a man’s credulity to believe that. But when it is done--” he added with one of the sudden smiles which used to illuminate his rugged countenance, but now lighted it up with a gleam of angry melancholy, just touched with humour, “you don’t take money from him, Paul.” “Nor does he take it from you,” said Paul, quickly. “Spears, this is all folly. It is not a matter of passion, as you make it. Say I am as much in the wrong as you like. I did not know my own mind. I have had enough to go through in the last six weeks to teach me many things more important than my own mind. I can’t go with you; I have found out that--but what then? I don’t lose my interest in you; we don’t cease to be friends. As for stabbing you, putting a knife into you--that is ludicrous,” he cried, with an angry laugh. “It is like a couple of lovers in a French novel; not two Englishmen and friends.”