Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/206

THE IVORY TOWER the more vividly it all would stare at him as a marked course of his own. Wonderful thus the little space of his feeling the great wave set in motion by that quiet worthy break upon him out of Gray's face, Gray's voice, Gray's contact of hands laid all appealingly and affirmingly on his shoulders, and then as it retreated, washing him warmly down, expose to him, off in the intenser light and the uncovered prospect, something like his entire personal future. Something extraordinarily like, yes, could he but keep steady to recognise it through a deepening consciousness, at the same time, of how he was more than matching the growth of his friend's need of him by growing there at once, and to rankness, under the friend's nose, all the values to which this need supplied a soil.

"Well, I won't pretend I'm not glad you don't adopt me as pure ornament—glad you see, I mean, a few connections in which one may perhaps be able, as well as certainly desirous, to be of service to you. Only one should honestly tell you," Horton went on, "that people wanting to help you will spring up round you like mushrooms, and that you'll be able to pick and choose as even a king on his throne can't. Therefore, my boy," Haughty said, "don't exaggerate my modest worth."

Gray, though releasing him, still looked at him hard—so hard perhaps that, having imagination, 192