Throughout the conversation Nehal Singh had stood rigid, his hand
clenched on the jeweled hilt of his sword, his eyes riveted on the
faces of the four men who were thus unconsciously drawing him into the
intimate circle of their life. Much that they said was incomprehensible
to him. The references to "Napoleon" and to the unknown individual
contemptuously dubbed "the fellow" were not clear, but they left him
a gnawing sense of insult and scorn which he could not conquer. The
subsequent chink of money changing hands had jarred upon his ears--the
final dispute concerning their further pleasure made him sick with
disgust. These "gentlemen" sought their amusement in a place where he
would have scorned to set his foot.
This fact obliterated for a moment every other consideration. Was it
to these that his hero-worship was dedicated? Were these the men from
whom he was to learn greatness of thought, heroism of action, purity
in life, idealism--these blatant, coarse-worded, coarse-minded cynics
to whom duty was a "bore" and pleasure an excuse to plunge into the
lowest dregs of existence? In vain his young enthusiasm, his almost
passionate desire to honor greatness in others fought his contemptuous
conviction of their unworthiness. Gradually, it is true, he grew
calmer, and, like a climber who has been flung from a high peak,
gathered himself from his fall, ready to climb again. He told himself
that as an outsider he did not understand either the words or the
actions which he had heard and witnessed, that he judged them by the
narrow standard of a life spent cut off from the practical ways of the
world.
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