Page:Henry B. Fuller - Bertram Cope's Year, 1919.djvu/22

 uncertain, with much more confidence than he, backed by whatever assurances and accumulations he enjoyed, could face his own.

"To be young!" he said. "To be young!"

Do you figure Basil Randolph, alongside his portière, as but the observer, the raisonneur, in this narrative? If so, you err. What!—you may ask,—a rival, a competitor? That more nearly.

It was Medora Phillips herself who, within a mo-ment or two, inducted him into this rôle.

A gap had come in her chat with Cope. He had told her all he had been asked to tell—or all he meant to tell: at any rate he had been given abundant opportunity to expatiate upon a young man's darling subject—himself. Either she now had enough fixed points for securing the periphery of his circle or else she preferred to leave some portion of his area (now ascertained approximately) within a poetic penumbra. Or perhaps she wished some other middle-aged connoisseur to share her admiration and confirm her judgment. At all events——

"Oh, Mr. Randolph," she cried, "come here."

Randolph left his doorway and stepped across.

"Now you are going to be rewarded," said the lady, broadly generous. "You are going to meet Mr. Cope.

You are going to meet Mr.——" She paused. "Do

you know,"—turning to the young man,—"I haven't your first name?"

"Why, is that necessary?"

"You're not ashamed of it? Theodosius? Philander? Hieronymus?"