beauty — and Lana, her proud head drooping, and her sad, young eyes fixed on me — Oh, Euan!” She stood pressing down both eyelids with her fingers, motionless; then, with a quick-drawn breath and a brusque gesture, flung her arms wide and let them drop to her sides. “How can men follow what they call their ‘fortune,’ headlong, unheeding, ranging through the world as a hot-jowled hound ranges for rabbits? Are they never satiated? Are they never done with the ruthless madness? Does the endless chase with its intervals of killing never pall?”

“Hounds are hounds,” I said slowly. “And the hound will chase his thousandth hare with all the unslaked eagerness that thrilled him when his first quarry fled before him.”

“Why?”