“Wild man,—Ishmael,” she said to him.
But he went on regardless with what he had been saying.
“There’s but one use for the body,” he exclaimed, “health. Not mortification—that’s morbid. But health, lean and hard. Sinews like whips.” He bared a magnificent forearm. “The only instance where I practise what I preach,” he added bitterly, causing the muscles to rise at will.
“Then you should respect your brother Gregory,” she said, languidly content.
“You have seen him lately, my lady?”
“Yesterday, in the village.”
“The neatest of minds, in the body of a blacksmith,” said Silas.
“Neat?”
“Why, yes—so long as he doesn’t break out. Then he lays all around him, smashes everything he can see, without comment—that makes it quite uncanny, I assure you—and in a trice returns to his quiet and his neatness as though nothing out of the way had happened. He’s very inaccessible, my brother Gregory. No warnings. No explanations. No remorse. Nothing apparently, but action.”
“You respect that,” she said, looking at his fine bony face, and his thick rough hair.