He paused again.  Richard fingered at his watch.

“In our House, my son, there is peculiar blood.  We go to wreck very easily.  It sounds like superstition; I cannot but think we are tried as most men are not.  I see it in us all.  And you, my son, are compounded of two races.  Your passions are violent.  You have had a taste of revenge.  You have seen, in a small way, that the pound of flesh draws rivers of blood.  But there is now in you another power.  You are mounting to the table-land of life, where mimic battles are changed to real ones.  And you come upon it laden equally with force to create and to destroy.”  He deliberated to announce the intelligence, with deep meaning:  “There are women in the world, my son!”

The young man’s heart galloped back to Raynham.

“It is when you encounter them that you are thoroughly on trial.  It is when you know them that life is either a mockery to you, or, as some find it, a gift of blessedness.  They are our ordeal.  Love of any human object is the soul’s ordeal; and they are ours, loving them, or not.”

The young man heard the whistle of the train.  He saw the moon-lighted wood, and the vision of his beloved.  He could barely hold himself down and listen.

“I believe,” the baronet spoke with little of the cheerfulness of belief, “good women exist.”

Oh, if he knew Lucy!

“But,” and he gazed on Richard intently, “it is given to very few to meet them on the threshold—­I may say, to none.  We find them after hard buffeting, and usually, when we find the one fitted for us, our madness has misshaped our destiny, our lot is cast.  For women are not the end, but the means, of life.  In youth we think them the former, and thousands, who have not even the excuse of youth, select a mate—­or worse—­with that sole view.  I believe women punish us for so perverting their uses.  They punish Society.”

The baronet put his hand to his brow as his mind travelled into consequences.

‘Our most diligent pupil learns not so much as an earnest teacher,’ says The Pilgrim’s Scrip; and Sir Austin, in schooling himself to speak with moderation of women, was beginning to get a glimpse of their side of the case.

Cold Blood now touched on love to Hot Blood.

Cold Blood said, “It is a passion coming in the order of nature, the ripe fruit of our animal being.”

Hot Blood felt:  “It is a divinity!  All that is worth living for in the world.”

Cold Blood said:  “It is a fever which tests our strength, and too often leads to perdition.”

Hot Blood felt:  “Lead whither it will, I follow it.”

Cold Blood said:  “It is a name men and women are much in the habit of employing to sanctify their appetites.”

Hot Blood felt:  “It is worship; religion; life!”

And so the two parallel lines ran on.

The baronet became more personal: