“No,” answered Turnbull; “I trust that I am sufficiently fair-minded to canvass and consider the idea; but having considered it, I think Fleet Street is right, yes—­even if the Parthenon is wrong.  I think that as the world goes on new psychological atmospheres are generated, and in these atmospheres it is possible to find delicacies and combinations which in other times would have to be represented by some ruder symbol.  Every man feels the need of some element of purity in sex; perhaps they can only typify purity as the absence of sex.  You will laugh if I suggest that we may have made in Fleet Street an atmosphere in which a man can be so passionate as Sir Lancelot and as pure as Sir Galahad.  But, after all, we have in the modern world erected many such atmospheres.  We have, for instance, a new and imaginative appreciation of children.”

“Quite so,” replied MacIan with a singular smile.  “It has been very well put by one of the brightest of your young authors, who said:  ’Unless you become as little children ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven.’  But you are quite right; there is a modern worship of children.  And what, I ask you, is this modern worship of children?  What, in the name of all the angels and devils, is it except a worship of virginity?  Why should anyone worship a thing merely because it is small or immature?  No; you have tried to escape from this thing, and the very thing you point to as the goal of your escape is only the thing again.  Am I wrong in saying that these things seem to be eternal?”

And it was with these words that they came in sight of the great plains.  They went a little way in silence, and then James Turnbull said suddenly, “But I cannot believe in the thing.”  MacIan answered nothing to the speech; perhaps it is unanswerable.  And indeed they scarcely spoke another word to each other all that day.

IX.  THE STRANGE LADY

Moonrise with a great and growing moon opened over all those flats, making them seem flatter and larger than they were, turning them to a lake of blue light.  The two companions trudged across the moonlit plain for half an hour in full silence.  Then MacIan stopped suddenly and planted his sword-point in the ground like one who plants his tent-pole for the night.  Leaving it standing there, he clutched his black-haired skull with his great claws of hands, as was his custom when forcing the pace of his brain.  Then his hands dropped again and he spoke.

“I’m sure you’re thinking the same as I am,” he said; “how long are we to be on this damned seesaw?”

The other did not answer, but his silence seemed somehow solid as assent; and MacIan went on conversationally.  Neither noticed that both had instinctively stood still before the sign of the fixed and standing sword.

“It is hard to guess what God means in this business.  But he means something—­or the other thing, or both.  Whenever we have tried to fight each other something has stopped us.  Whenever we have tried to be reconciled to each other, something has stopped us again.  By the run of our luck we have never had time to be either friends or enemies.  Something always jumped out of the bushes.”