“Some of us—perhaps.”
“You have felt that here then, the same as I?”
“I have.” Acey Smith lit a cigarette. “You may laugh at the conceit, but at times I could fancy the feel of a basket sword-hilt at my side, the rap-rap of its scabbard-end on my heels and even the jingle of spurs on my boots. Yet, what I believe—”
He broke off and laughed scornfully at his own confession. “What nonsense to be boring you with, Miss Stone!”
“But it’s not nonsense, and you’re not boring me. You must go on,” she commanded, “even if I have to first confess that I have heard the clanking of your knightly sword, the jingling of your spurs—yes, and even felt at my cheek for the beauty-patch I fancied was there.”
His glance met hers, swiftly. If she were merely acting she was intense about it.
“I was going to say that what I believe is that it is a fleeting glimpse of the ideal we experience at such times, and imagination does the rest,” he continued. “Most of us are composites of two or more personalities. Fate, or circumstances if you prefer, decrees which of those personalities shall flourish; the others, like the sucker-shoots of yonder mountain ash tree, aspire but never attain perfection. There is always the Man That Is and the Man That Might Have Been. Saint or sinner, philosopher or fool, there comes sooner or later a time when the Man That Might Have Been insists on life and triumph for his little day.”
“But doesn’t the choice of personality lie pretty much with the man himself?” she argued. “You know they say that every man is the architect of his own fortune.”
“Strong men are ever the playthings of Destiny,” he replied. “So-called masterful men stifle their true selves and accept the role that Fate has ordained alone shall carry them to their goal.”
“That’s cynicism.”