Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/117

THE IVORY TOWER breath—he was a little spent. "You tell me. You tell me."

"I'm tiring you, sir," Gray said.

"Not by letting me see—you'd only tire me if you didn't." Then for the first time his eyes glanced about. "Haven't they put a place for you to sit? Perhaps they knew," he suggested, while Gray reached out for a chair, "perhaps they knew just how I'd want to see you. There seems nothing they don't know," he contentedly threw off again.

Gray had his chair before him, his hands on the back tilting it a little. "They're extraordinary. I've never seen anything like them. They help me tremendously," he cheerfully confessed.

Mr. Bettennan, at this, seemed to wonder. "Why, have you difficulties?"

"Well," said Gray, still with his chair, "you say I'm different—if you mean it for my being alien from what I feel surrounding me. But if you knew how funny all that seems to me," he laughed, "you'd understand that I clutch at protection."

"'Funny'?"—his host was clearly interested, without offence, in the term.

"Well then terrific, sir!"

"So terrific that you need protection?"

"Well," Gray explained, gently shaking his chair-back, "when one simply sees that nothing of one's former experience serves, and that one doesn't know anything about anything!" 103