"... Pray your gods," said Surface, "that you never have such reason to hate your fellow-men as I have had, my boy. For that has been the keynote of my unhappy life. God, how I hated them all, and how I do yet!... Not least Weyland, with his ostentatious virtue, his holier-than-thou kindness, his self-righteous magnanimity tossed even to me ... the broken-kneed idol whom others passed with averted face, and there was none so poor to do me reverence...." So this, mused Queed, was the meaning of the old professor's invincible dislike for Miss Weyland, which he had made so obvious in the boarding-house that even Mr. Bylash commented on it. He had never been able to forgive her father's generosity, which he had so terribly betrayed; her name and her blood rankled and festered eternally in the heart of the faithless friend and the striped trustee. Henderson, the ancient African who attended the two men, knocked upon the shut door with the deprecatory announcement that he had twice rung the supper-bell. "Take the things back to the kitchen, Henderson," said Queed. "I'll ring when we are ready." The breeze was freshening, blowing full upon Surface, who did not appear to notice it. Queed got up and lowered the window. The old man's neglected cigarette burned his fingers; he lit another; it, too, burned itself down to the cork-tip without receiving the attention of a puff. Presently he went on talking: "I was of a high-spirited line. Thank God, I never learned to fawn on the hand that lashed me. Insult I would not brook. I struck back, and when I struck, I struck to kill.--Did I not? So hard that the State reeled.... So hard that if I had had something better than mean negroes and worse whites for my tools, fifth-rate scavengers, buzzards of politics ... this hand would have written the history of the State in these forty years. "That was the way I struck, and how did they answer me?--Ostracism ... Coventry ... The weapons of mean old women, and dogs.... The dogs! That is what they were.... "Well, other arms were ready to receive me. Others were fairer-minded than the cowardly bigots who could blow hot or cold as their selfish interests and prostituted leaders whispered. I was not a man to be kept down. Oh, my new friends were legion, and I was king again. But it was never the same. In that way, they beat me. I give them that.... Not they, though. It was deep calling to deep. My blood--heritage--tradition--education--all that I was ... this was what tortured me with what was gone, and kept calling.