"
"Hilda," I cried, "you are a witch! How COULD you know that? I can't
imagine."
She smiled her restrained, Chaldean smile. "Because I KNOW Sebastian,"
she answered, quietly. "I can read that man to the core. He is simple
as a book. His composition is plain, straightforward, quite natural,
uniform. There are no twists and turns in him. Once learn the key,
and it discloses everything, like an open sesame. He has a gigantic
intellect, a burning thirst for knowledge; one love, one hobby--science;
and no moral instincts. He goes straight for his ends; and whatever
comes in his way," she dug her little heel in the brown soil, "he
tramples on it as ruthlessly as a child will trample on a worm or a
beetle."
"And yet," I said, "he is so great."
"Yes, great, I grant you; but the easiest character to unravel that
I have ever met. It is calm, austere, unbending, yet not in the least
degree complex. He has the impassioned temperament, pushed to its
highest pitch; the temperament that runs deep, with irresistible force;
but the passion that inspires him, that carries him away headlong,
as love carries some men, is a rare and abstract one--the passion of
science.
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