fairly conservative man. You are not--you're a
plunger--a gambler in emotions. That's why I'm hanging out a warning
signal."

The big man laughed with the full-chested mirth of a Viking.

"Why, my dear fellow, you would like me less if I were changed from
what you call the beast of prey to such a house-dog as are most of your
acquaintances. I refresh you in a life of drab monotony, because of my
outspoken repudiation of things that life's copy-cats accept without
thought or demurrer. I interest you because, though I am educated and
disreputably rich, I remain at heart a savage--because I like to break
away from the tawdry glitter of social pretense and run baying joyously
at the head of the wild pack. And, in fairness, you must admit that
when I revert to feral instincts I don't have to ask odds as an
amateur."

The great fellow came abruptly to his feet, not with the ponderousness
of most giants, but with a panther-like agility and smoothness.

"I am idle--yes--so far as it is idle for a man to refuse to go on
despoiling weaker men for gain--but why not? I can spend a fortune
every year for a long life-span, and still leave loot a-plenty behind
my taking off. Yet, my idling is not mere slothfulness. I know the
Orient, not as the ordinary white man knows it, but as one who has
become a brother to the yellow and brown. I know these hills. No man
in this town to-night, save yourself, suspects that I am not native--or
even that I have ever participated in any other life."

"All of which I admit. The wolf may be more interesting than the
collie--but for the sheepfold the collie is safer. I'm thinking of
Alexander."

Halloway reflectively knocked the nub of ash from his pipe, and went on
more slowly. "Civilization stifles me," he said seriously. "But when
I turn my back on its dusty theologues and dogmatists, I still hold
tight to the poets. To me feeling means much, but cold thought is like
a fireless hearth."

The speaker was standing before the frame of the dark window. The wild
capriciousness of the weather had brought rain and flashes of untimely
lightning flared now and again into momentary whiteness. Brent looked
at the mighty proportion of his companion and thought of the girl who
slept in another tawdry room opening on the same narrow hallway. Each
of them was unusual; each of them insurgent; each without fear. If
their two natures should strike the spark of attraction, he trembled to
th