"He says it isn't, but I'm afraid the wish is the father to the thought: in his case as in--as in that of others." Lansdale added the inclusive in the hope that the wound would be the better for probing. Jeffard's laugh was altogether bitter. "'Give a dog a bad name,'" he quoted. "Do you know, I fancied Dick would be obstinate enough to stand out against the apparent fact?" "That is precisely what he has done, and with less reason than the most devoted partisan might demand. You know you told him that the claim was Garvin's. He wouldn't believe the newspaper story; he insisted that you would be able to 'square' yourself, as he phrased it, when you came out." Jeffard was looking past his interlocutor, out and beyond to where the farther tables were emptying themselves of the late diners. "Yet it is his supposition; and your own, you were going to say. Is it Miss Elliott's also?" Lansdale resisted the impulse to rummage again, and said: "I don't know that--how should I know? But rumor has made the charge, and you have not denied it." "I don't mean to deny it--not even to her. But neither have I admitted it." "My dear Jeffard! aren't the facts an admission?--at least, so long as they stand uncontradicted." "Everybody seems to think so,--and I can afford to be indifferent." "Having the money, you mean?--possibly. Am I to take that as an admission of the facts?" "Facts are fixtures, aren't they? things not to be set up or set aside by admissions or denials. But you may take it as you please." Lansdale shook his head as one whose deprecation is too large for speech. "I can't begin to understand it, Jeffard,--the motive which could impel a man of your convictions, I mean." Jeffard broke forth in revilings. "What do you know about my convictions? What do you know about anything in the heart of man? You have a set of formulas which you call types, and into which you try to fit all human beings arbitrarily, each after his kind. It's the merest child's-play; a fallacy based on an assumption. No two men can be squared by the same rule; no two will do the same things under exactly similar conditions. Character-study is your specialty, I believe; but you have yet to learn that the human atom is an irresponsible individuality." "Oh, no, I haven't; I grant you that. But logically"-- "Logic has nothing whatever to do with it. It's ego, pure and unstrained, in most of us; a sluggish river of self, with a quicksand of evil for its bottom." Lansdale borrowed a gun of his antagonist, and sighted it accurately. "What do you know about humanity as a whole? What do you know about any part of it save your own infinitesimal fraction?--which seems to be a rather unfair sample."