“An impudent, pushing, base fellow,” thrust in Mount Dunstan fiercely.  “One of a vulgar lot.  A thing fancying even its beggary worth buying.  What has a man—­whose very name is hung with tattered ugliness—­to offer?”

Penzance’s hand was still on his shoulder and his look at him was long.

“His very pride,” he said at last, “his very obstinacy and haughty, stubborn determination.  Those broken because the other feeling is the stronger and overcomes him utterly.”

A flush leaped to Mount Dunstan’s forehead.  He set both elbows on the mantel and let his forehead fall on his clenched fists.  And the savage Briton rose in him.

“No!” he said passionately.  “By God, no!”

“You say that,” said the older man, “because you have not yet reached the end of your tether.  Unhappy as you are, you are not unhappy enough.  Of the two, you love yourself the more—­your pride and your stubbornness.”

“Yes,” between his teeth.  “I suppose I retain yet a sort of respect—­and affection—­for my pride.  May God leave it to me!”

Penzance felt himself curiously exalted; he knew himself unreasoningly passing through an oddly unpractical, uplifted moment, in whose impelling he singularly believed.

“You are drawing her and she is drawing you,” he said.  “Perhaps you drew each other across seas.  You will stand here together and you will tell her of this—­on this very spot.”

Mount Dunstan changed his position and laughed roughly, as if to rouse himself.  He threw out his arm in a big, uneasy gesture, taking in the room.

“Oh, come,” he said.  “You talk like a seer.  Look about you.  Look!  I am to bring her here!”

“If it is the primeval thing she will not care.  Why should she?”

“She!  Bring a life like hers to this!  Or perhaps you mean that her own wealth might make her surroundings becoming—­that a man would endure that?”

“If it is the primeval thing, you would not care.  You would have forgotten that you two had ever lived an hour apart.”

He spoke with a deep, moved gravity—­almost as if he were speaking of the first Titan building of the earth.  Mount Dunstan staring at his delicate, insistent, elderly face, tried to laugh again—­and failed because the effort seemed actually irreverent.  It was a singular hypnotic moment, indeed.  He himself was hypnotised.  A flashlight of new vision blazed before him and left him dumb.  He took up his pipe hurriedly, and with still unsteady fingers began to refill it.  When it was filled he lighted it, and then without a word of answer left the hearth and began to tramp up and down the room again—­out of the dim light into the shadows, back out of the shadows and into the dim light again, his brow working and his teeth holding hard his amber mouthpiece.