The historian finished his meal in silence. Mauney, with queer biological insight, imagined the man to be secretly glorying over the victory suggested by the meat on his plate. It had once been alive. Man was subjecting it to the service of his pilgrimage of being.
A subtle chill had entered by the window from the outside world, rendering this compact family group no longer intimate friends. They were now selfish animals, eating other animals, by the light of burning tallow. And it seemed fitting that the light was so dim and flickering—all was mystery, cold, impenetrable, and the great happiness was out of sight.
The two men smoked anon in the familiar study upstairs. Mauney conversed with his professor in a mood of semi-detachment, unable to pull from his eyes a screen that was changing the apparent world to new interpretations. Even the study was permeated with the chill atmosphere that existed only in the imagination. Little currents of cool air played upon his spine like horrid fears. The volumes that filled Freeman’s capacious shelves stood like dangerous enemies against whom he felt he must be on guard. In the chair before him sat and smoked a puny man whom Merlton and a continent acclaimed as great. But the screen was drawing across him too—a dangerous menace grew mysteriously out of the perennial smile that played upon his lips. He would smile life out, this dangerous man who had conquered existence, and reduced existence to its bare biological structure. While Mauney sat beside him the historian’s words affected him more deeply than they had ever done before. The hot spot burned in Mauney’s breast, as it had burned at Christmas with Maxwell Lee. He suffered from its heat; he struggled inwardly, knowing that even seated in a quiet upstairs study, his own fate, hinging on the direction of his tempted thoughts, was in danger of change.
At last it was ended. It was time for him to leave the scholar with his books. He rose from his chair and went downstairs, glad to be away from him. He carried confusion of mind with him to the drawing room where Lorna sat at the piano, playing. He was puzzled. He did not interrupt her, but stood near the instrument watching her. He wanted to leave the house, for the burning, the unexplained, but painful burning continued in his breast, and he coveted solitude.
“Did you like that?” she said, as she finished, and her blue eyes turned to his. In them she saw no conscious response. “You’re moody to-night, aren’t you Mauney?” she asked indifferently.
“Oh, play some more, Lorna,” he said, trying to smile. “Please do.”
He sank thoughtfully into a chair as she continued, but he heard not a note of her music. A sadness such as had never possessed him had settled upon his being. It was as if he had already gone to the professor and said:
“I am leaving. I am going far away. I appreciate all your kindness. But I’ve got to go.”
It was as if he had already gone to Mrs. Freeman and said: “Good-bye. You have been decent to me, but something takes me away for ever from your sad home.”
And it was exactly as if he had interrupted the girl at the piano to say: