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38

Bought it, I hope.

I shall smoke a cigarette. Thirtyseven copies have now been sold in Dublin.

[Suavely, hopelessly.] Well, the matter is closed for the present. You have your iron mask on today.

[Smoking.] Let me hear the rest.

[Again seriously.] Richard, you are too suspicious. It is a defect in you. He assured me he has the highest possible opinion of you, as everyone has. You are the man for the post, he says. In fact, he told me that, if your name goes forward, he will work might and main for you with the senate and I will do my part, of course, in the press and privately. I regard it as a public duty. The chair of romance literature is yours by right, as a scholar, as a literary personality.

The conditions?

Conditions? You mean about the future?

I mean about the past.

[Easily.] That episode in your past is forgotten. An act of impulse. We are all impulsive.