Elgar was again mute.  His companion, in an access of intolerable suffering, cried out vehemently: 

“Can’t you see into yourself far enough to know that you are paltering with necessity?  Are you such a feeble creature that you must be at the mercy of every childish whim, and ruin yourself for lack of courage to do what you know you ought to do?  If instability of nature had made such work of me as it has of you, I’d cut my throat just to prove that I could at least once make my hand obey my will!”

“It would be but the final proof of weakness,” replied Elgar, laughing.  “Or, to be more serious, what would it prove either one way or the other?  If you cut your throat, it was your destiny to do so; just as it was to commit the follies that led you there.  What is all this nonsense about weak men and strong men?  I act as I am bound to act; I refrain as I am bound to refrain.  You know it well enough.”

This repeated expression of fatalism was genuine enough.  It manifested a habit of his thought.  One of the characteristics of our time is that it produces men who are determinists by instinct; who, anything but profound students or subtle reasoners, catch at the floating phrases of philosophy and recognize them as the index of their being, adopt them thenceforth as clarifiers of their vague self-consciousness.  In certain moods Elgar could not change from one seat to another without its being brought to his mind that he had moved by necessity.

“What if that be true?” said Mallard, with unexpected coldness.  “In practice we live as though our will were free.  Otherwise, why discuss anything?”

“True.  This very discussion is a part of the scheme of things, the necessary antecedent of something or other in your life and mine.  I shall go to Naples to-morrow; I shall spend one day there; on the day after I shall be with you again.  My hand upon it, Mallard.  I promise!”

He did so with energy.  And for the moment Mallard was the truer fatalist.

Again they left the inn, this time going seaward.  Still in rain, they walked towards Minori, along the road which is cut in the mountain-side, high above the beach.  They talked about the massive strongholds which stand as monuments of the time when the coast-towns were in fear of pirates.  Melancholy brooded upon land and sea; the hills of Calabria, yesterday so blue and clear, had vanished like a sunny hope.

The morrow revealed them again.  But again for Mallard there had passed a night of much misery.  On rising, he durst not speak, so bitter was he made by Elgar’s singing and whistling.  Yet he would not have eared to prevent the journey to Naples, had it been in his power.  He was sick of Elgar’s company; he wished for solitude.  When his eyes fell on the materials of his art, he turned away in disgust.

“You’ll get to work as soon as I’m gone,” cried Reuben, cheerfully.

“Yes.”

He said it to avoid conversation.