Trist repeated his question:
“When do you dislike me, Brenda?”
Her reply was somewhat indirect.
“At times,” she said, without looking towards him, “you attempt wilfully to misrepresent yourself, and I cannot quite see why you should wish to do so. You said just now that you were very sanguinary and quite happy. You meant to convey a deeper meaning, I know, because you glanced involuntarily towards me to see if I had caught it. Now, why should you pretend to be a hard-hearted, cruel and cold-blooded man? That is what I do not understand.”
She shook her small head despairingly, and looked up at him with a very shadowy smile. There was no question implied in the tone of her voice. She showed clearly that she expected no answer. It was merely her recital of a difficulty encountered in the study of a problem. This problem was the character of the man standing before her, the only man of her own age, and among her friends, to whose intellect her own was content to bow. To him she talked of many strange undiscussed matters, and together they had waded very deeply into questions which were opened centuries ago, and are now no nearer their solution. It was not that Theo Trist was a supernaturally grave man, but Brenda felt instinctively that he would never laugh at her. He was a good and careful listener; moreover, she had never yet propounded a question, in her vague, half-wistful way, about which he did not know something; upon which he could not put forward, in his gentle and suggestive way, an opinion which was either the result of his own thoughts or of those of other men.
“Everything is a matter of habit,” said the mild-eyed sportsman vaguely.
He knew that she was not thinking about salmon-fishing and its cruelty at all, but of the strange incongruity of his profession. He was well aware that Brenda Gilholme, in her brave little heart, disapproved of his calling. Of war and its horrors she rarely spoke, for she felt that his existence was necessarily bound to such things. It was a gift vouchsafed with a reckless disregard for incongruity which could only be providential—this gift of a warlike pen. He stood alone, far above his compeers, the one man who could write, in French and English alike, of war; and while respecting his undoubted intellect, she would fain have brought all the force of her will to bear upon him and urge him from the exercise of it on the field of battle. She was influenced by the strong horror of a refined and gentle woman for all things akin to violence and bloodshed, and she could not believe that in his heart of hearts the soft-eyed, quiet man loved the sight of blood and the smoky grime of battle.
“Yes,” she answered. “Endurance may be a matter of habit, but why seek that which requires endurance?”
He attempted to keep the question within the bounds of a sporting matter.
“Every living thing in creation is by the laws of creation expected to prey upon some other living thing. By a merciful provision we men cannot quite look at the question from the salmon’s point of view. It is a fight—an unfair fight, I admit—but still there is no wanton cruelty in killing salmon.”
He ceased abruptly, and held up his arm, looking at it critically. There was a deep scratch across the wrist from which the blood had trickled in several rivulets and congealed upon the back of his slim brown hand. Looking up, he saw that she was gazing at the wounded limb, and with a slight apologetic smile he put it behind his back so as to conceal it from her eyes.
“The actual sight of blood,” he continued, “whether it be cold from the salmon or warm from one’s own veins, is a mere technical unpleasantness which soon loses its horror … for men.”
“I was not thinking of salmon-fishing.”
“Nor I,” he replied with cool audacity.
There was another long pause, during which neither moved. It was noteworthy that Trist, who had been on his legs in rough water, and over rocky country, since early morning, showed no sign of fatigue. If he had so desired, it would have been easy enough for him to bring forward one of the low chairs standing near the skylight, but he appeared to prefer standing.
“But in losing that sense of horror,” asked Brenda presently, “do not men become brutalized?”
He shrugged his shoulders perceptibly.
“Do you think so?” he inquired significantly.
The question was cleverly thrown back upon her, but Brenda intended to get her answer. She looked up with a passing smile, and made him a little pout with her pretty lips.
“You are no criterion. You are different altogether. I was speaking generally.”
“Speaking generally, I should still be of opinion that men are not affected in any harmful way by seeing …
