For an instant Mary Burton thought her brother would spring upon her lover in a tigerish abandon of fury, and she knew from the fighting flame in the other's eyes that he would be met half-way. Paul had dropped into a chair, where he sat as one stunned.
Burton returned the gaze which had never dropped from its inflexible directness; and his own voice was changed to a key of satirical quiet.
"If I am all the things you charge," he suggested, "it's a pretty full indictment and may warrant some discussion in passing. Paul," he added with a curt gesture of dismissal, "I hardly think this conversation will amuse you." The younger Burton rose and left the room, and as he went Mary took her place at the side of the man she had promised to marry and stood there as straight and unflinching as himself.
"Mr. Edwardes," Hamilton began, "years ago I was a country boy, not yet fully able to translate the voices that spoke to me from within: voices that told me I was a son of Destiny. In a fashion, I owe you something as an interpreter of those voices. You have just spoken more bitterly than it is easy for me to forgive. Yet, I am anxious to talk temperately--and God knows it will require an effort. Will you meet me half-way?"
Jefferson Edwardes had not moved. He was still white with anger, but the tempest that had brought his eruption of denunciation had passed, and he gravely bowed his head in assent.
"Very well. We seem to hold standards of conduct irreconcilably divergent. To my thinking you are a self-righteous and tedious dreamer and an impertinent preacher."
Edwardes nodded and his answer was composed. "We are all dreamers of varied sorts. You are yourself the mightiest of dreamers: because you make your visions realities. Paul is a lesser dreamer--almost a sleep-walker through life. As for Mary--" his voice grew suddenly tender--"why, I first saw her in the sun and dust of a mountain roadside, dreaming of fairy princes. I come last, but I'm a dreamer, too. All my visions are simple, but I've tried to keep them compatible with honest ideals."
"At least, you have hardly succeeded in keeping them to yourself." Hamilton Burton's voice was still controlled, but it was witheringly bitter. "Let me make myself clear. In an unhappy marriage I see a fact where you see a gauzy sacrament. I have become what I am, because to me the broad canvas alone is interesting, and picayunish prejudices are contemptible. You bring into my house a visage of disapproval, and when you overhear private talk permit yourself to sneer. It is intolerable."