Osmond sat looking straight at him with eyes that burned. His hands, hanging at his side, were clenched. He recognized the might of the man, the crude physical power of him like an emanation, and he felt the despairing helplessness of trying to move a potency like that. Cliffs might be corroded by the sea; but a human force that respects no other cannot be easily invaded. He spoke without his own will, and heard himself speaking:--
MacLeod was regarding him with as direct a gaze.
"What do you mean by that?" he asked, with a moderate interest. "Do you mean I haven't any mercy, any kindness? Is that what you mean?"
It was not what he meant. It was the indwelling spirit such as he saw in grannie, the mobile thing in Peter that, changing, blossoming in errant will here and there as the sun of life bade it, seemed in one form or another to proclaim itself undying. He shook his head.
A smile ran over MacLeod's face and moved it most delightfully.
"Well," said he, "if we're going to take inventories--have you a soul?"
"Well, then, what's the use of slanging me? If you're in the same box yourself--Come, who has one? has anybody?"
Osmond thought then of Rose, and of the fire of the spirit playing over her, that brightness he could neither classify nor define. Yet he must believe in it.
"You have? And you think I'm exempt. Why?"
Osmond was not getting anywhere. MacLeod and his own ineptitude of speech seemed to be forcing him into the solicitous fright of the mother, bent on shielding her child from the wolf.
"You are too powerful," he said, and realized that he was using the evidence Rose had given him, thought for thought.
"I hope so. I ought to be. I've got to overturn power."
"What's the use? You're a czar yourself. You're only another kind."
MacLeod looked at him thoughtfully, as if struck by the form of words.
"My dear fellow," he said, "is it possible you believe in the present state of things? Do you want one man to possess everything and the next man nothing?"
Osmond frowned his negation. MacLeod, unfairly it seemed to him, made him feel young and inadequate to the matter. He had the eyes to see what cause was just, yet he had not the equipment to maintain any cause at all.
"What is the use," he essayed, "for you and men like you to head revolts? It only means you are ruling instead of the rulers you overturn. It will all be done over again. The big man will rise to the top. The little man will go under. And in time you will have the same conditions repeated. It's because you are not teaching love. You are teaching envy and hate."