“Certainly it is the great division.  Between the born adventurer and the community-man there is a far greater gulf fixed than between the former and an eagle or the latter and a cony.  Lone trail or circumscribed hearth—­between these lies the only incompatibility.”

“There is a good deal in your theory,” said Boase, “but it goes too much for externals.  The home-keeping man may be the one with the free spirit and the wanderer the man who cannot get away from habits that tie him to other people wherever he goes.”

“Sounds like a perambulating bigamist,” said Killigrew, laughing.  “But you’re right as usual, Padre, and go to the heart of it while I’m being merely superficial.  According to my division your brother Archelaus is a fox and an eagle and all the other lone things right enough, isn’t he, Ishmael?”

“Yes,” said Ishmael slowly, “I think he is.”

“Whereas you are the bee, the wolf, the cony,” declared Killigrew.  “Isn’t he, Padre?”

Boase smiled.  “Shall I tell you what I think, Joe?” he answered, “It is this.  Ishmael is by circumstances and inclination a dweller in one spot, and custom and humanity incline him to tie himself always more closely to it and the people in it.  But man is not as simple as your animals, and in most of us is something alien, some strain of other instincts.  The man who lives intimately on one piece of earth may have a deep instinct in spite, perhaps because, of it, to keep himself free and to resent claims even while he acknowledges them.  Just as a man who is free to go where he likes, as you do, may carry his own chains with him.  For the only slavery is to oneself, and it is the man who flows inwards instead of outwards who is not free.”

“I wonder ...” said Killigrew.

“The real flaw in your argument, Joe,” said Ishmael, “is that your lone hunter in the animal world always has his mate and his young, whereas when you make the division apply to mankind you class all that with the herd and deny it to the man who would be free.”

“Because that’s how it translates into terms of humanity,” said Killigrew swiftly.  “Civilisation has made the taking of a mate a bond as firm as pack-law, and woe to him who, having yielded to it, transgresses it.  It is not I who have made that division, it is the world.”

“He might have spared me this to-night ...” thought Judith.

Ishmael kept silence.  He was thinking of the truth of what Killigrew had been saying, and weighing it against this new flame that had sprung up within him that day.  Freedom—­loneliness is the price paid for liberty, he knew that.  And he had found loneliness sweet, or, when not actually that, at least very bearable.  Yet even as he thought it he knew for him there was, as ever, at any crisis of his life, only the one way.  He had that directness which, though seeing all ways—­for it is not the same thing as simplicity—­yet never doubted as to the only one possible for himself.