Halloway reflectively knocked the nub of ash from his pipe, and went on more slowly. "Civilization stifles me," he said seriously. "But when I turn my back on its dusty theologues and dogmatists, I still hold tight to the poets. To me feeling means much, but cold thought is like a fireless hearth."
The speaker was standing before the frame of the dark window. The wild capriciousness of the weather had brought rain and flashes of untimely lightning flared now and again into momentary whiteness. Brent looked at the mighty proportion of his companion and thought of the girl who slept in another tawdry room opening on the same narrow hallway. Each of them was unusual; each of them insurgent; each without fear. If their two natures should strike the spark of attraction, he trembled to think of what a conflagration might blaze from the kindling.
"I'm not discussing theories," he said a bit shortly. "I'm talking about a mountain girl whom I take it you would never marry—and if not——" He spread his hands and left the sentence unfinished.
"And if not?" Halloway caught him up. "What has marriage necessarily to do with love? There is more honesty and stimulation in the life-story of any grande amoureuse than a dozen of your stodgy fraus."
"I'm going to bed," declared Will Brent. "But—leave Alexander alone. I don't think she'd see eye to eye with you on the subject of the grande amoureuse."
"That only foreshadows a duel of wills—conflict—drama."
Halloway paused and laughed, and after that he went on with eyes that glowed admiringly.
"I dare say she never heard of an Amazon—and she's a splendid one. She dares to live a man's life in a country where other women tamely accept thraldom! Perhaps it is a great adventure. I have seen a meteor and I shall stay."
"Of course you know," Brent reminded him evenly, "the first hint that you are a millionaire masquerading as a native will engulf you in local suspicion."
"I don't mean that they shall learn that." Suddenly Halloway's head bent forward a little and his brows contracted. "They can't learn it except through you."