Aurelian laughed softly, and rambled vaguely on over the strings of his samosen, making strange music. "Now we will quarrel no more, for we are where we began. Malcolm, if you must go to your death, _Vale_, I will offer a kid and honey on the altar of Mnemosyne. Go your ways, and leave me to mine; I am aweary of this servile and perishing world, rheumy and gibbering. Here I have my books of the Elect, my fading pictures, my treasures of dead civilisation. This is my monastery, like those of the old Faith that, during the night that came down on the world after the ruin of Rome, treasured as in an ark the seeds of the new life. Here I can gather my Children of Light and bar my doors against the Philistines without, among whom, dear Malcolm, force me not yet to number you. Be lenient with me, accept my hospitality; it will strengthen you for your fight with the windmill that forces the wind of God to grind men and women like grain. In the mean time, it is still the youth of the night, so I will give you more wine--or your favourite beer if you like; I have some good Bavarian. Those four decadents and the poor agnostic there on the floor are happy. I never take the black smoke myself, nor any of you: wise, all of you, but God forbid that I should refuse any guest of mine aught! They, sleeping in opium-dreams, have chosen their way. We will choose another for ourselves." III. The night had grown old unnoticed, and now in the first dim twilight of coming dawn Aurelian and McCann were sitting on the wide terrace that stretched along the south side of the great house, smoking lazily and drinking the fine rare wines that Aurelian treasured as he treasured his precious books. Not far away the nightingales were singing in the thick wood; other sound there was none save the sweet rustle and stir of the awakening trees under the first thin wind of morning.