“It’s all injured vanity,” Mr. Quincunx went on, throwing at his luckless girl-friend a look of quite disproportioned anger. “It’s all his outraged power-instinct that drives him to take up this pose. I know what I’m talking about, for I often argue with him. Whenever I dispute the smallest point of his theories, he bursts out like a demon and despises me as a downright fool. He’d have got me turned out of the Social Meetings, because I contradicted him there, if our worthy clergyman hadn’t intervened. You’ve no idea how deep this power-instinct goes. You must remember, Mr. Dangelis, you see a village like ours entirely from the outside and you think it beautiful, and the people charming and gentle. I tell you it’s a nest of rattlesnakes! It’s a narrow, poisonous cage, full of deadly vindictiveness and concentrated malice. Of course we know what human nature is, wherever you find it, but if you want to find it at its very worst, come to Nevilton!” “But you yourself,” protested the artist, “are you not one of these same people? I understand that you--” Mr. Quincunx rose to his feet, his expressive nostrils quivering with anger. “I don’t allow anyone to say that of me!” he cried “I may have my faults, but I’m as different from all these rats, as a guillemot is different from a cormorant!” He sat down again and his voice took almost a pleading tone. “You know I’m different. You must know I’m different! How could I see all these things as clearly as I do if it wasn’t so? I’ve undergone what that German calls ‘the Great Renunciation.’ I’ve escaped the will to live. I neither care to acquire myself this accursed power--or to revolt, in jealous envy, against those who possess it.” He relapsed into silence and contemplated his garden and its enclosing hedge, with a look of profound melancholy. Dangelis had been considerably distracted during the latter part of this discourse by his artistic interest in the delicate lines of Lacrima’s figure and the wistful sadness of her expression. It was borne in upon him that he had somewhat neglected this shy cousin of his exuberant young friend. He promised himself to see more of the Italian, as occasion served. Perhaps--if only Gladys would agree to it--he might make use of her, also, in his Dionysian impressions. “Surely,” he remarked, speaking with the surface of his intelligence, and pondering all the while upon the secret of Lacrima’s charm, “whatever this man may be, he’s not a hypocrite,--is he? From all I hear he’s pathetically in earnest.” “Of course we know he’s in earnest,” answered Maurice. “What I maintain is, that it is his personal vindictiveness that creates his opinions. I believe he would derive genuine pleasure from seeing Nevilton House burnt to the ground, and every one of the people in it reduced to ashes!” “That proves his sincerity,” answered the American, keeping his gaze fixed so intently upon Lacrima that the girl began to be embarrassed.