And sometimes I fancy he is rather lonely. I think I will ask
him to dine with us to-night,' and, presently going out, met the red-
haired man and said to him, `Are you doing anything to-night? If not,
won't you dine with us? It would be a great pleasure to my wife. Only
ourselves. Come just as you are.' `That is most good of you, but,'
stammered the red-haired man, `as ill-luck will have it, I am engaged
to-night. A long-standing, formal invitation. I wish I could get out
of it, but I simply can't. I have a morbid conscientiousness about
such things.' Thus we see that the will to offer hospitality was an
earlier growth than the will to accept it. But we must beware of
thinking these two things identical with the mere will to give and the
mere will to receive. It is unlikely that the red-haired man would
have refused a slice of eagle if it had been offered to him where he
stood. And it is still more unlikely that his friend would have handed
it to him. Such is not the way of hosts. The hospitable instinct is
not wholly altruistic. There is pride and egoism mixed up with it, as
I shall show.
Meanwhile, why did the red-haired man babble those excuses? It was
because he scented danger. He was not by nature suspicious, but--what
possible motive, except murder, could this man have for enticing him
to that cave? Acquaintance in the open valley was all very well and
pleasant, but a strange den after dark--no, no! You despise him for
his fears? Yet these were not really so absurd as they may seem.
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