I am
not a foul-mouthed man, but I have used gross words and rough ones to
describe them."
"I have heard you."
Mount Dunstan threw back his head with a big, harsh laugh. He came out
of the shadow and stood still.
"Well," he said, "I am in love--as much in love as any lunatic ever
was--with the daughter of Reuben S. Vanderpoel. There you are--and there
_I_ am!"
"It has seemed to me," Penzance answered, "that it was almost
inevitable."
"My condition is such that it seems to ME that it would be inevitable in
the case of any man. When I see another man look at her my blood races
through my veins with an awful fear and a wicked heat. That will show
you the point I have reached." He walked over to the mantelpiece and
laid his pipe down with a hand Penzance saw was unsteady. "In turning
over the pages of the volume of Life," he said, "I have come upon the
Book of Revelations."
"That is true," Penzance said.
"Until one has come upon it one is an inchoate fool," Mount Dunstan went
on. "And afterwards one is--for a time at least--a sort of madman raving
to one's self, either in or out of a straitjacket--as the case may be. I
am wearing the jacket--worse luck! Do you know anything of the state of
a man who cannot utter the most ordinary words to a woman without being
conscious that he is making mad love to her? This afternoon I found
myself telling Miss Vanderpoel the story of Red Godwyn and Alys of the
Sea-Blue Eyes.
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