"Everywhere. These fellows, Randall and the rest, are bringing their Tigers with 'em. They're going to put them there for all the world to see. It's only another party out against the Duchess, she wants all the Tigers hidden—only herself to know about them—then she can do her work. She'll hate these fellows until they've made their stand and then she'll try to adopt them in order to muzzle them the better in the end.
"If Westcott hides his Tiger, forgets he's there, his way's plain enough. He'll make money, the Duchess will ask him to tea. Let him join these fellows and his Tiger may tear all his present self to pieces."
"What about yourself, Brun?"
"Oh, I'm nothing! I'm the one great exception. No Tiger thinks me worth while. I merely observe, I don't feel—and you have to feel to keep your Tiger alive."
Brun's little lecture was over. He suddenly drew his body together, clapped his mental hands to dismiss the whole thing and was drawing Westcott to the door.
"But I talk—how I talk! You bear with me, Christopher, because I must go on, you know. It means nothing—absolutely nothing. But they will have arrived now, so down we go. I go on in my sleep, exactly the same. And now tea—and I will talk less because Breton talks a great deal and so does Arkwright, and so do you...."
II
Arkwright came, and after a little, Breton. But the meeting was not a success. Arkwright had heard a good deal about Breton's reputation, and although, on the whole, he was tolerant of any backsliding in women, he made what he called his liking for "clean men" an excuse for much narrow-mindedness.
It is quite a mistake to suppose that living in solitude and danger makes a human being tolerant. It has the precisely opposite effect. Arkwright was more frightened of a man who was not "quite right with society" than of any number of enraged natives. With natives one knew where one was. Whereas with a man like this ...