...
The fighting, too, is a convention. I see that, and that it is not
adequate. Yet so do I hold you in hatred that I would destroy you in
this poor way also!"
The two sat not eight feet apart. Time was when either, finding
himself in deadly straits, would have seen in the other a sure
rescuer, or a friend to perish with him. One would have come to the
other in a burst of light and warmth. So countless were the
associations between them, so much knowledge, after all, did they have
of each other, that even now, if they hated and contended, it must be,
as it were, a contention within an orb. To each hemisphere, repelling
the other, must yet come in lightning flashes the face of the whole.
Glenfernie, under the lantern-light, looked like the old laird his
father. "No long time ago," he said, "'revenge,' 'vengeance,' seemed
to me words of a low order! It was not so in my boyhood. Then they
were often to me passionate, immediate, personal, and vindicated
words! But it grew to be that they appeared words of a low order. It
is not so now. As far as that goes I am younger than I was a year ago.
I stand in a hot, bright light where they are vindicated. If fate sets
you free again, yet I do not set you free! I shall be after you. I
entered this place to tell you that."
"Do as you will!" answered Ian. Scorn mounted in his voice.
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