“I like that word.”
“What word?”
“Duty.”
“It is horrible—sometimes.”
“Oh, that's because you think it's narrow. But it isn't. It contains infinities, and—and so———”
“What is this jargon?”
He disregarded the interjected scorn. “An infinity of absolution, for instance,” he continued. “But as to this another world'—who's going to look for it and for the tale that is in it?”
“You,” she said, with a strange, almost rough, sweetness of assertion.
He made a shadowy movement of assent in his chair, the irony of which not even the gathered darkness could render mysterious.
“As you will. In that world, then, there was once upon a time a Commanding Officer and a Northman. Put in the capitals, please, because they had no other names. It was a world of seas and continents and islands———”