Page:The Inheritors, An Extravagant Story.djvu/285

 "But," I said, "everyone says; you said yourself . . ."

"To be sure," he answered. "But you don't think that I play second fiddle to a bounder of that calibre. Not really?"

He looked at me with a certain seriousness. I remembered, as I had remembered once before, that Fox was a personality—a power. I had never realised till then how entirely—fundamentally—different he was from any other man that I knew. He was surprising enough to have belonged to another race. He looked at me, not as if he cared whether I gave him his due or no, but as if he were astonished at my want of perception of the fact. He let his towzled head fall back upon the plush cushions. "You might kick him from here to Greenland for me," he said; "I wouldn't weep. It suits me to hold him up, and a kicking might restore his equilibrium. I'm sick of him—I've told him so. I knew there was a woman. But don't you worry; I'm the man here."

"If that's the case . . ." I said.

"Oh, that's it," he answered.

I helped him to put the paper to bed; took some of the work off his hands. It was all part of the getting back to life; of the resuming of