"
He lifted an eyebrow. "One must be in the fashion; besides, it
does need some skill to fight. The others--to dance, drink, love:
blind men's games!" He smiled cynically into the distance.
I have never known a man who interested me so much--never one so
original, so varied, and so uncommon in his nature. I marvelled at
the pith and depth of his observations; for though I agreed not with
him once in ten times, I loved his great reflective cleverness and
his fine penetration--singular gifts in a man of action. But action
to him was a playtime; he had that irresponsibility of the Court
from which he came, its scornful endurance of defeat or misery,
its flippant look upon the world, its scoundrel view of women. Then
he and Duvarney talked, and I sat thinking. Perhaps the passion
of a cause grows in you as you suffer for it, and I had suffered,
and suffered most by a bitter inaction. Governor Dinwiddie, Mr.
Washington (alas that, as I write the fragment chapters of my life,
among the hills where Montrose my ancestor fought, George leads
the colonists against the realm of England!), and the rest were
suffering, but they were fighting too.
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