"But why," he said at length, "why won't you trust me to bring it precisely that way?"
Osmond smiled faintly.
"No," he said, "you couldn't."
"But why? You say I am extremely powerful. You rather accuse me of it. I am too powerful, in fact. Wasn't that what you said?"
"Yes."
"Well, why not trust me to administer your great awakening?"
Osmond kept his ironic smile of unbelief.
"You are not the man," he said. "You would not believe in it. You wouldn't live it. You are very powerful. But your mastery wouldn't serve you. That's where you can't pretend."
"Now where have you got your idea of me?" MacLeod was looking at him sharply. "You never saw me before to-day. Yet your idea was already formed before I came down here. Who's been talking to you?"
Osmond had entrenched himself at last in his customary reserve.