blunders and even of financial abuses. Some said that the experiment of
attempting to establish a peasantry in the west of England, on the lines of an
early fancy of Horne Fisher's, had resulted in nothing but dangerous quarrels
with more industrial neighbors. There had been particular complaints of the ill
treatment of harmless foreigners, chiefly Asiatics, who happened to be
employed in the new scientific works constructed on the coast. Indeed, the
new Power which had arisen in Siberia, backed by Japan and other powerful
allies, was inclined to take the matter up in the interests of its exiled subjects;
and there had been wild talk about ambassadors and ultimatums. But
something much more serious, in its personal interest for March himself,
seemed to fill his meeting with his friend with a mixture of embarrassment and
indignation.
Perhaps it increased his annoyance that there was a certain unusual
liveliness about the usually languid figure of Fisher. The ordinary image of
him in March's mind was that of a pallid and bald-browed gentleman, who
seemed to be prematurely old as well as prematurely bald. He was
remembered as a man who expressed the opinions of a pessimist in the
language of a lounger. Even now March could not be certain whether the
change was merely a sort of masquerade of sunshine, or that effect of clear
colors and clean-cut outlines that is always visible on the parade of a marine
resort, relieved against the blue dado of the sea. But Fisher had a flower in his
buttonhole, and his friend could have sworn he carried his cane with
something almost like the swagger of a fighter. With such clouds gathering
over England, the pessimist seemed to be the only man who carried his own
sunshine.
"Look here," said Harold March, abruptly, "you've been no end of a friend
to me, and I never was so proud of a friendship before; but there's something I
must get off my chest. The more I found out, the less I understood how you
could stand it. And I tell you I'm going to stand it no longer."
Horne Fisher gazed across at him gravely and attentively, but rather as if
he were a long way off.
"You know I always liked you," said Fisher, quietly, "but I also respect
you, which is not always the same thing. You may possibly guess that I like a
good many people I don't respect. Perhaps it is my tragedy, perhaps it is my
fault. But you are very different, and I promise you this: that I will never try to
keep you as somebody to be liked, at the price of your not being respected."
"I know you are magnanimous," said March after a silence, "and yet you
tolerate and perpetuate everything that is mean." Then after another silence he
added: "Do you remember when we first met, when you were fishing in that
brook in the affair of the target? And do you remember you said that, after all,