Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/391

 sultans and kaisers … and if we are that, we must die to slow music in the course of time."

I vouchsafed no comment. Could this be Imre von N—? Certainly I had made the acquaintance of a new and extremely uncongenial Imre; in exactly the least appropriate circumstances to lose sight of the sympathetic, gentler-natured friend, whom I had begun to consider as one well understood, and had found responsive to a word, a look. Did all his closer friends meet, sooner or later, with this under-half of his temperament—this brusqueness which I had hitherto seen in his bearing with only his outside associates? Did they admire it … if caring for him? Bitterness came over me in a wave, it rose to my lips in a burst:

"It is just as well that one of us should show some feeling … a trifle … when our parting is so near."

A pause. Then Imre:

"The 'one of us', that is to say the only one who has any 'feeling', being yourself, my dear Oswald?"

"Apparently."

"Don't you think that perhaps you rather take things for granted? Or that, perhaps, you feel too much? That is, in supposing that I feel too little"?

My reply was quick and and acid enough:

"Have you any sentiments in the matter worth calling by such a name, at all? I've not remarked them so far! Are friends that love you and value you only worth their day with you?… have they no real, lasting individuality for you? Your heart is not difficult to occupy."

Again a brief interval. Imre was beating a tattoo on his braided cap, and examining the top of that article with much attention. The sky was less light now. The long, melancholy house had grown pallid against the foliage. Still the same fitful breeze. One of the cows lowed.

Presently he looked up, and began speaking gravely—kindly—not so much as if seeking his words for their exactness, but rather as if he were fearful of commiting [sic] himself outwardly to some innermost process of thought. Afraid, more than unwilling.

"Listen, my dear friend. We must not expect too much of one another in this world—must we? Do not be foolish. You know well that one of the last things that I regard as 'of a day' is our friendship—however suddenly grown. No matter what you think now … for just these few moments—when something disturbs us both—that you know. Why, dear friend! did I not believe it