He talked a long time thus, while the daylight
faded and dusk crept into the room, and then night; and Queed listened,
giving him all the rein he wanted and saying never a word himself.
"... Pray your gods," said Surface, "that you never have such reason to
hate your fellow-men as I have had, my boy. For that has been the
keynote of my unhappy life. God, how I hated them all, and how I do
yet!... Not least Weyland, with his ostentatious virtue, his
holier-than-thou kindness, his self-righteous magnanimity tossed even to
me ... the broken-kneed idol whom others passed with averted face, and
there was none so poor to do me reverence...."
So this, mused Queed, was the meaning of the old professor's invincible
dislike for Miss Weyland, which he had made so obvious in the
boarding-house that even Mr. Bylash commented on it. He had never been
able to forgive her father's generosity, which he had so terribly
betrayed; her name and her blood rankled and festered eternally in the
heart of the faithless friend and the striped trustee.
Henderson, the ancient African who attended the two men, knocked upon
the shut door with the deprecatory announcement that he had twice rung
the supper-bell.
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