Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/125

THE IVORY TOWER say so) as rather astonished at it?" And then while his host took this without response, only engaged as to more entire repletion in the steady measure of him, he added further, even though aware in sounding it of the complacency or fatuity, of the particular absurdity, his question might have seemed to embody: "What in the world can I want but to meet you in every way?" His perception at last was full, the great strange sense of everything smote his eyes; so that without the force of his effort at the most general amenity possible his lids and his young lips might have convulsively closed. Even for his own ear "What indeed?" was thus the ironic implication—which he felt himself quite grimace to show he should have understood somebody else's temptation to make. Here, however, where his uncle's smile might pertinently have broadened, the graver blandness settled again, leaving him in face of it but the more awkwardly assured. He felt as if he couldn't say enough to abate the ugliness of that—and perhaps it even did come out to the fact of beauty that no profession of the decent could appear not to coincide with the very candour of the greedy. "I'm prepared for any thing, yes—in the way of a huge inheritance": he didn't care if it might sound like that when he next went on, since what could he do but just melt to the whole benignity? "If I only understood what it is I can best do for you." 111