His companion said nothing; but there was a vexed and impatient look on his face.

“And our little daughter—­is she pretty?  Does she coax the young men to play with daggers?—­the innocent little thing!  And when you start with your dynamite to break open a jail, she blows you a kiss?—­the charming little fairy!  What is it she has embroidered on the ribbons round her neck?—­’Mort aux rois?’ ‘Sic semper tyrannis?’ No; I saw a much prettier one somewhere the other day:  ’Ne si pasce di fresche ruggiade, ma di sangue di membra di re.’  Isn’t it charming?  It sounds quite idyllic, even in English:  ’Not for you the nourishment of freshening dews, but the blood of the limbs of kings!’ The pretty little stabber—­is she fierce?”

“Brand, you are too bad!” said the other, throwing down his knife and fork, and getting up from the table.  “You believe in neither man, woman, God, nor devil!”

“Would you mind handing over that claret jug?”

“Why,” he said, turning passionately toward him, “it is men like you, who have neither faith, nor hope, nor regret, who are wandering aimlessly in a nightmare of apathy and indolence and indifference, who ought to be the first to welcome the new light breaking in the sky.  What is life worth to you?  You have nothing to hope for—­nothing to look forward to—­nothing you can kill the aimless with.  Why should you desire to-morrow?  To-morrow will bring you nothing different from yesterday; you will do as you did yesterday and the day before yesterday.  It is the life of a horse or an ox—­not the life of a human being, with the sympathies and needs and aspirations of a man.  What is the object of living at all?”

“I really don’t know,” said the other, simply.

But this pale hump-backed lad, with the fine nostrils, the sensitive mouth, the large forehead, and the beautiful eyes, was terribly in earnest.  He forgot about his place at table.  He kept walking up and down, occasionally addressing his friend directly, at other times glancing out at the dark river and the golden lines of the lamps.  And he was an eloquent speaker, too.  Debarred from most forms of physical exercise, he had been brought up in a world of ideas.  When he went to Oxford, it was with some vague notion of subsequently entering the Church; but at Oxford he became speedily convinced that there was no Church left for him to enter.  Then he fell back on aestheticism—­worshipped Carpaccio, adored Chopin, and turned his rooms at Merton into a museum of old tapestry, Roman brass-work, and Venetian glass.  Then he dabbled a little in Comtism; but very soon he threw aside that gigantic make-believe at believing.  Nevertheless, whatever was his whim of the moment, it was for him no whim at all, but a burning reality.  And in this enthusiasm of his there was no room left for shyness.  In fact, these two companions had been accustomed to talk frankly; they had long ago abandoned that self-consciousness which ordinarily restricts the conversation of young Englishmen to monosyllables.  Brand was a good listener and his friend an eager, impetuous, enthusiastic speaker.  The one could even recite verses to the other:  what greater proof of confidence?