Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/207

THE IVORY TOWER he might in an instant more have felt it go down too deep. It hadn't done that, however, when "What I want of you above all is exactly that you shall pick and choose" was merely what at first came of it. And the case was still all of the rightest as Graham at once added: "You see 'people' are exactly my difficulty—I'm so mortally afraid of them, and so equally sure that it's the last thing you are. If I want you for myself I want you still more for others—by which you may judge," said Gray, "that I've cut you out work."

"That you're mortally afraid of people is, I confess," Haughty answered, "news to me. I seem to remember you, on the contrary, as so remarkably and—what was it we used to call it?—so critico-analytically interested in 'em."

"That's just it—I am so beastly interested! Don't you therefore see," Gray asked, "how I may dread the complication?"

"Dread it so that you seek to work it off on another?"—and Haughty looked about as if he would after all have rather relished a cigarette.

Clearly, none the less, this awkwardness was lost on his friend. "I want to work off on you, Vinty, every blest thing that you'll let me; and when you've seen into my case a little further my reasons will so jump at your eyes that I'm convinced you'll have patience with them."

"I'm not then, you think, too beastly interested myself? I've got such a free mind, 193