The Ball and The Cross

instantaneously and recovered their original pose, but they had both made it, they had both seen it, and they both knew what it was. It was not a movement of anger at being interrup

itable sunset of first love, these men

would have killed each other or they would have killed him. But now nothing could undo or deny that flash of fact, that for a second they had been glad to be interrupted. Some new and strange thing was rising higher and higher in their hearts like a hi

to you," said the stranger, in a v

treated backwards into the waistcoat, and the way in which the finely shaped nose went forward as if smelling its way. And it was only, perhaps, at the hundredth glance that the bright blue eyes, which normally before and after the instant seemed brilliant with intelligence, seemed as it were to be brilliant with idiocy. He was a heavy, healthy-looking man, who looked all the larger because of the loose, light coloured clothes that he wore, and that had in their extreme lightness and looseness, alm

f you are in some little difficulty which, after all, we could settle

this appeal. But the stranger, probably taking their silen

rs. Well, of course, when one is young, one is rather r

s gay inquiry. Then Turnbull

day, I probably came into the wo

t a duel. I suppose you aren't much up in the modern world. We've quite outgrown duelling, you know. In fact, Tolstoy tells us that we shall soo

oden auditors, the stranger stood b

nting to fight about something connected with Roman Catholi

speech he had made the moment before. Without enlarging further on the fixed form of his appeal to the Church of Rome, he laughed co

frivolities. "I am sure that if I appealed to your higher natures...your higher natures. Every man has a higher nature and a lower nature. N

an, speaking fo

really!" said

immovable Highlander. "The

l about a word," said

ldn't there be a quarrel about a word? If you're not going to argue about words, what are you going to argue about? Are you going to convey your meaning to me by moving your ears? The Church and the heresies always used to fight about words, because they are the only things worth fighting about. I say that murder is a

man, wagging his head. "Now, do you k

open laughter. The peacemaker did not seem to be in t

, this really quite wrong violence of yours. But it's against my principles to call in the police against you, because the police are still on a lower moral plane, so to speak, because, in short, the police undoubtedly sometimes employ force.

. Turnbull suddenly gripped his sword and said, shortly, "I see how you are placed quite well, sir.

imson in the face. "It is against all modern ideas. It is against t

k about Christianity. Don't you dare to say one word, white or black, about it. Christianity is, as far as you are concerned, a horrible mystery. Keep clear of it, keep silent upon it, as you would upon an abomination. It is a thing that has made men slay and torture each other; and you will never know why. It is a thing that has made men do evil that good might come; and you will never underst

tling something loose in his elaborate hilt

police?" he said,

most sacred dog

a sort of dismay. "Oh, we

silence, and he

no moral principles being quite fixed. Have you ever read The Qui

piece of the pommel with string. With the string in his te

of view. I rather feel that in a case so extreme as this..." and he went slowly away. As he disappeared among the trees,

breath. "Don't you believe in pr

voice, "I felt the devil weakening my heart and my oath agai

s mending and wrapping the rest of the s

el

n was an angel

were as bad as that,

ic. "Why should not angels sometimes come to show us the black abyss of evil on whose

u mean," said T

philosophy. You may grow fond of that mire of crawling, cowardly morals, and you may come to think a blow bad, because it hurts, and not because it humiliates. You may come to think murder wrong, because it is violent, an

hate; and at once plunged and replunged. Once more each man's heart had become the magne

at?" asked the Hi

know," repl

hat?" cried

up his remarkable mind," said Turnbull, qu