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, it might do no harm if I
could blow the whole tangle of this society to hell with dynamite.
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