Michael almost cried “touche!” aloud.

“He was an awful brute—­the owner of Arranstoun, I suppose?”

“Yes—­apparently—­and one who broke a contract and rather glorified in the fact.”

Michael laughed a little bitterly, as he answered: 

“All men are brutes when the moment favors them, and when a woman is sufficiently attractive.  We will admit that the owner of Arranstoun was a brute.”

“He was a man who, I understand, lived only for himself and for his personal gratification,” Mrs. Howard told him.

“Poor devil!  He perhaps had not had much chance.  You should be charitable!”

Sabine shrugged her shoulders in that engaging way she had.  She had hardly looked up again at Michael since the beginning, the exigencies of the dinner-table being excuse enough for not turning her head; but his eyes often devoured her fascinating, irregular profile to try and discover her real meaning, but without success.

“He was probably one of those people who are more or less like animals, and just live because they are alive,” Sabine went on.  “Who are educated because they happen to have been born in the upper classes—­Who drink and eat and sport and game because it gives their senses pleasure so to do—­but who see no further good in things.”

“A low wretch!”

“Yes—­more or less.”

Michael’s eyes were flashing now—­and she did peep at him, when he said: 

“But if the original of the ghost had stayed with him, she might have been able to change this base view of life—­she could have elevated him.”

Sabine shook her head.

“No, she was too young and too inexperienced, and he had broken all her ideals, absolutely stunned and annihilated her whole vista of the future.  There was no other way but flight.  She had to reconstruct her soul alone.”

“You do not ask me what became of the owner of Arranstoun—­or what he did with his life.”

“I know he went to China—­but the matter does not interest me.  There he probably continued to live and to kill other things—­to seize what he wanted and get some physical joy out of existence as usual.”

A look of pain now quenched the fire.

“You are very cruel,” he said.

“The owner of Arranstoun was very cruel.”

“He knows it and is deeply repentant; but he was and is only a very ordinary man.”

“No, a savage.”

“A savage then, if you will—­and one dangerous to provoke too far;” the fire blazed again.  “And what do you suppose your friend learned in those five years of men—­after she had ceased to exist as the owner of Arranstoun knew her?”

Sabine laughed, but there was no mirth in the sound.

“Of men!  That they are like children, desiring only the toys that are out of reach, wasting their souls upon what they cannot obtain and valuing not at all the gifts of the gods which are in their own possession.”