There was something in his very tone which sent the blood coursing through Walter's veins, and seemed to swell to bursting the great currents of life. He cried out—
"You have driven me to despair. You have cut off from me every hope. And now you exhort me to find myself very well off, to adapt my life to a new plan. Is that all you know?"
His companion smiled. "You would like me better to repeat to you again that you have no ground to stand upon, and are as unworthy as one can be at your age. All that is very true. But one aspect of the matter is not all. In the mean time you will have to live and get on somehow. Suicide of course is always open to you, but you are not the sort of man for that; besides, it is begging the question, and solves no problem. No, you must live—on the second level. Your ideal has always been impossible, for you have never had heart or will to keep up to it. Why you should have had this fit of fantastic wilfulness now, and really believed that by means of vague aspirations you were to get the better of me and all your antecedents, I cannot tell. You must now find out practically how you are to live."
Walter had reached the lowest depths of despair a little while ago. He had consented that it was all true, that there was no further escape for him; but now again a passionate contradiction surged up within him. "I will not," he said, vehemently, "I will not—take your way."
"I think you will—for why? there is no other half so good. You will be very comfortable, and you will have done a great thing for your house. By-and-by you will settle into a conviction that what you have done is the best thing you could have done. It is one of the privileges of mankind. And I promise you that I will not molest you. Your coming here will be little more than a formula. You will agree with me: why then should there be any controversy between us? Maturity and wealth and well-being will bring you to think with me that a settled advantage like that of one's race is far beyond all evanescent good of the fancy. You will become respectable and happy—yes, quite happy enough—as happy as men have any right to be."
There was a half-tone of mockery, as if the speaker scorned the picture he drew; and at every word the resistance which had been almost stilled in Walter's mind rose up more warmly. "Are you happy yourself," he said, suddenly, "that you recommend this to me?"
The stranger paused a little. "The word is a trivial one. I have many gratifications," he said.
"I don't know what your gratifications can be. Is it worth your while to live through the ages as you say—you, so powerful as you are, with so many great faculties—in a miserable old ruin, to exercise this terrorism upon unoffending men?"
Then Walter's companion laughed aloud. "To live for ages in a miserable old ruin!" he said. "That does not seem a very attractive lot indeed. But set your mind at rest, my kind descendant; I live in a miserable ruin no more than you do. My affairs are everywhere. I have the weakness of a man for my own—perhaps in other regions as well—but that is nothing to you."
"It is everything to me. Give me some explanation of you. If, as you say, you have lived for centuries impossibly, how have you done it? Have you ever come to a blank wall like me—have you ever been abandoned by every hope? or," cried the young man, "am I your superior in this horrible experience? No man could stand as I do—given up to despair: and yet go on living like you."