Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/208

THE IVORY TOWER you mean, and such a hard heart, and such a record of failure to have been any use at all to myself, that I must be just the person, it strikes you, to save you all the trouble and secure you all the enjoyment?" That inquiry Horton presently made, but with an addition ere Gray could answer. "My difficulty for myself, you see, has always been that I also am by my nature too beastly interested."

"Yes"—Gray promptly met it—"but you like it, take that easily, immensely enjoy it and are not a bit afraid of it. You carry it off and you don't pay for it."

"Don't you make anything," Horton simply went on, "of my being for instance so uncannily interested in yourself?"

Gray's eyes again sounded him. "Are you really and truly? to the extent of its not boring you?" But with all he had even at the worst to take for granted he waited for no reassurance. "You'll be so sorry for me that I shall wring your heart and you'll assist me for common pity."

"Well," Horton returned, a natural gaiety of response not wholly kept under, "how can I absurdly make believe that pitying you, if it conies to that, won't be enough against nature to have some fascination? Endowed with every advantage, personal, physical, material, moral, in other words, brilliantly clever, inordinately rich, strikingly handsome and incredibly good, 194