"It is horrible indeed," I said, "and nothing can be more un-English. We are the most sensible race in the world, as well as the most straightforward. 'Have it out and be done with it,' is our rule; no steel, no lead, no poison; but a fight with what the Lord has made."
"You also have your brutality, I fear. But it is not my place to talk of that, after all the kindness I have received among you. And you are wide awake to all your own virtues, so that I need not insist upon them. Is there anything more you would ask me?"
"Nothing, Sûr Imar. And I may have seemed to trespass already on your patience. But I have a brother who is wonderfully clever in all mechanical and chemical affairs. May I bring him to see your type-stamping process, and other beautiful devices? They are out of my line altogether; but he would appreciate all of them. And more than that he is gifted, as you are, with the faculty of languages. He is the genius, and I the dunce. May he come? He has nothing to do with the Press, and will not even talk of what he sees."
"It will give me great pleasure to see such a man;" my host replied most courteously. "There is no secrecy about my work, beyond this--if your journals spoke of it--and they speak of even smaller matters--it might get into some Russian paper, and my little ideas would be quenched at once. Russia does not encourage education, outside her own narrow grooves. But if I could only begin unforbidden, probably I might go on for years. You see how sanguine I am still."
"And your nephew will be of great service, no doubt, as his mother is so friendly. In his early days he had no power of speech I think you told me. But that comes sometimes rather late in life."
"I do not think that I spoke about it; because I had no knowledge. His father mentioned it in that fatal letter. But before I left the mountains I was told that an operation at Tiflis had relieved the child of the tongue-tie; and now he seems to be in many ways a fine specimen of the Caucasus. He cannot speak your language well, though he has picked up a little of it, and he is not very fond of your nation. But if your brother is a linguist, possibly he might get on with him. And I should like to try the experiment. When will you bring your brother? But tell him not the story of my life, as I have told it to you. It is a thing I never speak of, without a special reason."