MacLeod shook his head.
"In the town of Abdera they suddenly began to love one another, that's all. They went round chanting, 'O Cupid, prince of God and men!'"
"Is that going to obviate all the difficulties?"
Osmond looked at him with dog's eyes, the eyes that seek and wonder out of their confusion of incomplete knowledge.
"Every man would refuse to rest," he said, "while any other man was hungry. They would all be humble, the rich as well as the poor. Now, one's as cocky as the other. I don't know that the cockiness of the ignorant is any more picturesque than the cockiness of the privileged."
MacLeod was smiling a little. These, he saw, were pretty dreams, but hardly of the texture to demand destruction. They would fall to pieces, in good time, of their own flimsiness.
"Do you believe in kings?" he asked idly.
Osmond glowed.
"I know it's a mighty pity not to," he said. "Some people have got to be fostered chiefly because they have gifts. If you don't draw a little circle round them, you lose the gifts maybe, and you certainly lose the fun of adoring them. I'd like to be a soldier of Alexander—if I couldn't be Alexander himself. But you'll never get anywhere smashing round and yelling that one man's better than another because he works with his hands. No! the man that brings peace will bring it another way."
MacLeod regarded him for a moment curiously.