The difference between them
was that he kept the curtain of his shop window down. Life pulsed
steadily and deep in him, and it was not his nature needlessly to agitate
the surface so that the world could see the splash he was making. And
the effect of the other's amazing exhibitions was to make him retreat
more deeply within himself and wrap himself more thickly than ever in the
nerveless, stoical calm of his race.
"You are so stupid the last few days," Joan complained to him. "One
would think you were sick, or bilious, or something. You don't seem to
have an idea in your head above black labour and cocoanuts. What is the
matter?"
Sheldon smiled and beat a further retreat within himself, listening the
while to Joan and Tudor propounding the theory of the strong arm by which
the white man ordered life among the lesser breeds. As he listened
Sheldon realized, as by revelation, that that was precisely what he was
doing. While they philosophized about it he was living it, placing the
strong hand of his race firmly on the shoulders of the lesser breeds that
laboured on Berande or menaced it from afar. But why talk about it? he
asked himself. It was sufficient to do it and be done with it.
He said as much, dryly and quietly, and found himself involved in a
discussion, with Joan and Tudor siding against him, in which a more
astounding charge than ever he had dreamed of was made against the very
English control and reserve of which he was secretly proud.
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