“Your affection expresses itself in an abrupt form,” he began, but MacIan broke the brittle and frivolous speech to pieces with a violent voice.  “Do not trouble to talk like that,” he said.  “You know what I mean as well as I know it.  Come on and fight, I say.  Perhaps you are feeling just as I do.”

Turnbull’s face flinched again in the fierce sunlight, but his attitude kept its contemptuous ease.

“Your Celtic mind really goes too fast for me,” he said; “let me be permitted in my heavy Lowland way to understand this new development.  My dear Mr. MacIan, what do you really mean?”

MacIan still kept the shining sword-point towards the other’s breast.

“You know what I mean.  You mean the same yourself.  We must fight now or else——­”

“Or else?” repeated Turnbull, staring at him with an almost blinding gravity.

“Or else we may not want to fight at all,” answered Evan, and the end of his speech was like a despairing cry.

Turnbull took out his own sword suddenly as if to engage; then planting it point downwards for a moment, he said, “Before we begin, may I ask you a question?”

MacIan bowed patiently, but with burning eyes.

“You said, just now,” continued Turnbull, presently, “that if we did not fight now, we might not want to fight at all.  How would you feel about the matter if we came not to want to fight at all?”

“I should feel,” answered the other, “just as I should feel if you had drawn your sword, and I had run away from it.  I should feel that because I had been weak, justice had not been done.”

“Justice,” answered Turnbull, with a thoughtful smile, “but we are talking about your feelings.  And what do you mean by justice, apart from your feelings?”

MacIan made a gesture of weary recognition!  “Oh, Nominalism,” he said, with a sort of sigh, “we had all that out in the twelfth century.”

“I wish we could have it out now,” replied the other, firmly.  “Do you really mean that if you came to think me right, you would be certainly wrong?”

“If I had a blow on the back of my head, I might come to think you a green elephant,” answered MacIan, “but have I not the right to say now, that if I thought that I should think wrong?”

“Then you are quite certain that it would be wrong to like me?” asked Turnbull, with a slight smile.

“No,” said Evan, thoughtfully, “I do not say that.  It may not be the devil, it may be some part of God I am not meant to know.  But I had a work to do, and it is making the work difficult.”

“And I suppose,” said the atheist, quite gently, “that you and I know all about which part of God we ought to know.”

MacIan burst out like a man driven back and explaining everything.