"What did he say?" I asked.
O'Rane hesitated. "He hinted that I wasn't accountable for my actions."
I burst out laughing. The words were so obviously inadequate.
"That's a curious reason for not sacking you," was Loring's comment.
O'Rane's black eyes, seemingly fixed on a gargoyle over Chapel door, were gazing into infinity.
"He said it was the Call of the Blood. And I—I—I just said nothing." His voice sank to a whisper. "I hardly understood."
The vision was for his eyes alone, and to us, uncomprehending, the rapt expression of his face and tense poise of the body was curiously disconcerting. Awkwardly self-conscious, Loring stepped forward and thrust his arm through O'Rane's.
"Pull yourself together, my son," he said.
O'Rane shook free of his arm. "You don't understand! But he did. He knew it all. There was one crossed to France in the Revolution, and him they guillotined because he was too powerful. And two died for Greece, and one went fighting for the North and the slaves. And one died by the wayside as the king's troops entered Rome. And one tended lepers in a South Pacific island." He strode up to Loring and stared him defiantly in the face. "And some day men will follow me as they never followed one of the others!"