hanger, Sir Lionel overtook them, boiling over with indignation.

"Your card, sir," he gasped out inarticulately to the calmly
innocent Alien; "you must answer for all this. Your card, I say,
instantly!"

Bertram looked at him with a fixed gaze. Sir Lionel, having had
good proof of his antagonist's strength, kept his distance
cautiously.

"Certainly NOT, my good friend," Bertram replied, in a firm tone.
"Why should _I_, who am the injured and insulted party, assist YOU
in identifying me? It was you who aggressed upon my free
individuality. If you want to call in the aid of an unjust law to
back up an unjust and irrational taboo, you must find out for
yourself who I am, and where I come from. But I wouldn't advise
you to do anything so foolish. Three of us here saw you in the
ridiculous position into which by your obstinacy you compelled me
to put you; and you wouldn't like to hear us recount it in public,
with picturesque details, to your brother magistrates. Let me say
one thing more to you," he added, after a pause, in that peculiarly
soft and melodious voice of his. "Don't you think, on reflection--
even if you're foolish enough and illogical enough really to
believe in the sacredness of the taboo by virtue of which you try
to exclude your fellow-tribesmen from their fair share of enjoyment
of the soil of England--don't you think you might at any rate
exercise your imaginary powers over the land you arrogate to
yourself with a little more gentleness and common politeness? How
petty and narrow it looks to use even an undoubted right, far more
a tribal taboo, in a tyrannical and needlessly aggressive manner!