Page:The Inheritors, An Extravagant Story.djvu/305

 sight together with the past they had known and with the future they had waited for. But he was odious. "I am done with you," I said.

"Eh; what? . . . Who wants to frighten? . . . I wanted to know what's your pet vice . . . Won't tell? You might safely—I'm off . . . No . . . Want to tell me mine? . . . No time . . . I'm off . . . Ask the policeman . . . crossing sweeper will do . . . I'm going."

"You will have to," I said.

"What . . . Dismiss me? . . . Throw the indispensable Soane overboard like a squeezed lemon? . . . Would you? . . . What would Fox say? . . . Eh? But you can't, my boy—not you. Tell you . . . tell you . . . can't . . . Beforehand with you . . . sick of it . . . I'm off . . . to the Islands—the Islands of the Blest . . . I'm going to be an . . . no, not an angel like Fox . . . an . . . oh, a beachcomber. Lie on white sand, in the sun . . . blue sky and palm-trees—eh? . . . S. S. Waikato. I'm off . . . Come too . . . lark . . . dismiss yourself out of all this. Warm sand, warm, mind you . ..