After a considerably long pause he said, slowly--"Well, 'master of the world' is a pretty tall order! Now, look here, Seaton--you're a plain, straight man, and so am I, as much as my business will let me. What are you after, anyway? What is your aim and end? You say you don't want money--yet money is the chief goal of all men's ambition. You don't care for fame, though you could have it for the lifting of a finger, and I suppose you don't want love--"

Seaton laughed heartily, pushing back with a ruffling hand the thick hair from his broad open brow.

"All three propositions are nil to me"--he said--"I suppose it is because I can have them for the asking! And what satisfaction is there in any one of them? A man only needs one dinner a day, a place to sleep in and ordinary clothes to wear--very little money is required for the actual necessaries of life--enough can be earned by any day-labourer. As for fame--whosoever reads the life of even one 'famous' man will never be such a fool as to wish for the capricious plaudits of a fool-public. And love!--love does not exist--not what I call love!"

"Oh! May I have your definition?"

"Why yes!--of course you may! Love, to my thinking, means complete harmony between two souls--like two notes that make a perfect chord. The man must feel that he can thoroughly trust and reverence the woman,--the woman must feel the same towards the man. And the sense of 'reverence' is perhaps the best and most binding quality. But nowadays what woman will you find worth reverence?--what man so free from drink and debauchery as to command it? The human beings of our day are often less respectable than the beasts! I can imagine love,--what it might be--what it should be--but till we have a very different and more spiritualised world, the thing is impossible."