All day a delightful exaltation possessed him; he was not yet at the stage when a man is plagued with doubts of success or advisability; he was only tingling with a new delight. He helped her along any rough place when they all walked over to the Vicarage to tea with a joy he had not felt the day before, and he did not even know how irrational it all was.
At tea the conversation turned on different types of men, and Killigrew held forth on what he held to be the only true and vital classification.
"The only division in mankind is the same as the only division in the animal world, of course," he said.
"What is that?" asked the Parson. "Wild and tame?"
"No; it is the division between the animal who goes with the pack and him who hunts a solitary trail. The bee is kin to the wolf because both are subject to a community-life with strict laws. The bee is nearer of kin to the wolf than it is to the butterfly, which lives to itself alone. The fox, who hunts and is harried as a solitary, is further removed from his brother the wolf than he is from the wild cat, who has like habits to himself. My natural history may be wrong, but you see the theory!"
"And you carry that into the world of man?" said Judith lightly. In her heart was a sick pain and anger, and the brightness of the day had fled for her; with his few careless words Killigrew had re-created all the old atmosphere of depression, of—"It's no good, I know he's as he is, and that nothing I can do or that happens to me will ever make him any different…."
"Certainly it is the great division. Between the born adventurer and the community-man there is a far greater gulf fixed than between the former and an eagle or the latter and a cony. Lone trail or circumscribed hearth—between these lies the only incompatibility."
"There is a good deal in your theory," said Boase, "but it goes too much for externals. The home-keeping man may be the one with the free spirit and the wanderer the man who cannot get away from habits that tie him to other people wherever he goes."
"Sounds like a perambulating bigamist," said Killigrew, laughing. "But you're right as usual, Padre, and go to the heart of it while I'm being merely superficial. According to my division your brother Archelaus is a fox and an eagle and all the other lone things right enough, isn't he, Ishmael?"
"Yes," said Ishmael slowly, "I think he is."