"Oh, certainly," said Sprague. "I shall say nothing; all the same, I don't like it. But Leicester'll give up the whole idea to-morrow. He'd never have thought of it to-night if he hadn't been drunk." "I drunk, my friends! I am as sober as the Nonconforming parson of the church that Miss Castlemaine attends. I'm as serious as a judge. No, no, I stand on principle--principle, my friends. I have a theory of life, and I stand by it, and I am ready to make sacrifices." "But how are you to get an introduction?" asked Sprague. Evidently he was uneasy in his mind. "Leave that to me; I ask you to do nothing but to hold your tongues, and that you've promised to do. I stand alone. I'm like your Martin Luther of old times. Against me are arrayed conventions and orthodoxy, pride and prejudice, thunders temporal and spiritual, but I fear them not. I--I, a poor solitary cynic, am stronger than you all, because I stand on the truth, and you stand on sentiment, convention, orthodoxy. Gentlemen, I drink to you in very mediocre club whisky; nay, I don't drink to you, I drink to the man who stands on the truth--truth, gentlemen, truth!" Again he lifted a glass of whisky to his lips and set it down empty. "I'm going to bed," said Sprague. "And I," said Purvis. "And I, gentlemen," said Leicester, "remain here. Like all men who undertake great enterprises, I must make my plans. As a champion of truth I must vindicate it. I live to rid the world of lies, of sham, of hypocrisy. Good-night, gentlemen, good-night." The whisky was beginning to show its effects at last, although his voice was still clear, his hand still steady. An unhealthy flush had come to his cheeks; the strange look in his eyes had become more pronounced. And yet had a stranger entered the room at that moment, that stranger would have been struck by his tall, stalwart figure and his striking face. For Radford Leicester was no ordinary-looking man. Compared with him the others were commonplace. Neither was his face a bad face. It suggested lack of faith and lack of hope, but it did not suggest evil. Moreover, the well-shaped head, the broad forehead, the finely formed features, suggested intellectuality and force of character. It also told of a man whom nothing could daunt when his mind was made up. But it was not the face of a happy man. No man who is without faith and hope can be.