“Ah,” said Peter, “no, of course we shouldn’t, but we are white men, and so are the Armenians—almost—” Then he glanced at the stranger’s dark face, and added quickly, “At least, it’s not the colour that matters, you know. I rather like a dark face, my mother’s eyes are brown—but the Armenians, you know, they’ve got long hair like us.”

“Oh, it is the hair, then, that matters,” said the stranger softly.

“Oh, well,” said Peter, “it’s not altogether, of course. But it’s quite a different thing, the Armenians wanting to get rid of the Turks, and these bloody niggers wanting to get rid of the Chartered Company. Besides, the Armenians are Christians, like us!”

“Are YOU Christians?” A strange storm broke across the stranger’s features; he rose to his feet.

“Why, of course, we are!” said Peter. “We’re all Christians, we English. Perhaps you don’t like Christians, though? Some Jews don’t, I know,” said Peter, looking up soothingly at him.

“I neither love nor hate any man for that which he is called,” said the stranger; “the name boots nothing.”

The stranger sat down again beside the fire, and folded his hands.

“Is the Chartered Company Christian also?” he asked.

“Yes, oh yes,” said Peter.

“What is a Christian?” asked the stranger.

“Well, now, you really do ask such curious questions. A Christian is a man who believes in Heaven and Hell, and God and the Bible, and in Jesus Christ, that he’ll save him from going to Hell, and if he believes he’ll be saved, he will be saved.”

“But here, in this world, what is a Christian?”

“Why,” said Peter, “I’m a Christian—we’re all Christians.”

The stranger looked into the fire; and Peter thought he would change the subject. “It’s curious how like my mother you are; I mean, your ways. She was always saying to me, ‘Don’t be too anxious to make money, Peter. Too much wealth is as bad as too much poverty.’ You’re very like her.”

After a while Peter said, bending over a little towards the stranger, “If you don’t want to make money, what did you come to this land for? No one comes here for anything else. Are you in with the Portuguese?”

“I am not more with one people than with another,” said the stranger. “The Frenchman is not more to me than the Englishman, the Englishman than the Kaffir, the Kaffir than the Chinaman. I have heard,” said the stranger, “the black infant cry as it crept on its mother’s body and sought for her breast as she lay dead in the roadway. I have heard also the rich man’s child wail in the palace. I hear all cries.”

Peter looked intently at him. “Why, who are you?” he said; then, bending nearer to the stranger and looking up, he added, “What is it that you are doing here?”

“I belong,” said the stranger, “to the strongest company on earth.”