"Go on. The young man rather puzzles
me myself. I should like to hear what you make of him. What did
you think of his face?"
"There was something powerful about it," he declared, "something
dogged, splendid, narrow, impossible,--the sort of face which
belongs to a man who achieves great things because he is too
stupid to recognize failure, even when it has him in its arms and
its fingers are upon his throat. That young man has qualities,
my dear, I am sure. Mind you, at present they are dormant, but
he has qualities."
She led him to the door.
"My dear father," she said, "sometimes I really respect you. If
you should come across that young man again, keep your eye upon
him. He knows one thing at least which I wish he would tell us
-- he knows where Beatrice is."
Her father looked at her in amazement.
"He knows where Beatrice is and he has not told you?"
She nodded.
"You tried to have him tell you and he refused?" the professor
persisted.
"Exactly," she admitted.
Her father put on his hat.
"I knew that young man was something out of the common."
CHAPTER X
THE JOY OF BATTLE
They sat on the trunk of a fallen tree, in the topmost corner of
the field. In the hedge, close at hand, was a commotion of
birds. In the elm tree, a little further away, a thrush was
singing. A soft west wind blew in their faces; the air
immediately around them was filled with sunlight. Yet almost to
their feet stretched one of those great arms of the city--a
suburb, with its miles of villas, its clanging of electric cars,
its waste plots, its rows of struggling shops.
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