Now--I warn you--I shall do none of these
things!"
The speaker paused a moment, and then turned impetuously on his
companion.
"Have you any reason so far to complain of my conduct toward you?"
"Complain? You have been only too amazingly, incredibly generous."
Melrose's hand made a disdainful movement.
"I did what suited me. And I told you, to begin with, it would _not_ suit
me to run my estate as though it were a University Settlement. Handle me
gently--that's all. You've had your way about some of the farms--you'll
get it no doubt with regard to others. But don't go about playing the
reformer--on this dramatic scale!--at my expense. I don't believe in this
modern wish-wash; and I don't intend to don the white sheet."
He rose, and lighting another cigarette, he dropped a log on the fire,
and stood with his back to it, quietly smoking. But his eyes were all
fierce life under the dome of his forehead, and his hand shook a little.
Faversham sat absolutely still. Rushing through his veins was the sense
of something incredible and intoxicating. The word "million" rang in his
ears. He was conscious of the years behind him--their poverty, their
thwarted ambitions, their impotent discontent. And suddenly the years
before him lit up; all was possible; all was changed. Yet as he sat there
his pulses hurrying, words coming to his lips which dropped away again,
he became conscious of two or three extremely sharp visualizations.
A room in one of the Mainstairs cottages, containing a bed, and on it a
paralyzed girl, paralyzed after diphtheria--the useless hands--the
vacant, miserable look--other beds in the same room filling it up--the
roof so low that it seemed to be crushing down on the girl--holes in the
thatch rudely mended.
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