"Otis; or any of your lot."
"My lot! That's her cry too. Has she learnt it from you? Do you lump me in with Amurrica's crew of thievin' idlers? —— them all for a set of ——"
Mayne's hand went up with the slight gesture which always stopped Bert's swearing.
"Mestaer," he said, "after what we have just seen, you will drop your fancy for Millie, won't you? There are girls who will play with a man's love to the very brink of the end; but if a girl has any sort of feeling for a man, she will turn to him in her trouble. Millie doesn't care for you—you must see that, don't you?"
Bert looked as though he had been suddenly turned into a graven image. Meeting the squareness of his jaw, the metallic glint of his hard grey eye, Mayne was conscious anew of the dreadful strength of undisciplined human nature, and the imperious quality of its desires. One is sometimes apt to wonder what twenty centuries of Christianity have done for Europe. The answer to the question stares you in the face the moment you step outside the circle in which Christianity has insensibly moulded public opinion.
"If she don't want me, she don't want no other man," said the giant doggedly; "and look how young she is. I've got patience; I can wait. But if she's going to be taken off to England—"
He broke off, and began to walk on.
"If she is going away to England?" repeated Mayne, trudging beside him.
"Why, then, I don't know as how I can."
Mayne thought rapidly for a minute.