Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/209

THE IVORY TOWER your state yet insists on being such as to nip in the bud the hardy flower of envy. What's the matter with you to bring that about would seem, I quite agree, well worth one's looking into—even if it proves, by its perversity or its folly, something of a trial to one's practical philosophy. When I pressed you some minutes ago for the reason of your not facing the future with a certain ease you gave as that reason your want of education and wit. But please understand," Horton added, "that I've no time to waste with you on sophistry that isn't so much as plausible." He stopped a moment, his hands in his pockets, his head thrown all but extravagantly back, so that his considering look might have seemed for the time to descend from a height designed a little to emphasise Gray's comparative want of stature. That young man's own eyes remained the while, none the less, unresentfully raised; to such an effect indeed that, after some duration of this exchange, the bigger man's fine irony quite visibly shaded into a still finer, and withal frankly kinder, curiosity. Poor Gray, with a strained face and an agitation but half controlled, breathed quick and hard, as from inward pressure, and then, renouncing choice—there were so many things to say—shook his head, slowly and repeatedly, after a fashion that discouraged levity. "My dear boy," said his friend under this sharper impression, "you do take it hard." Which made Graham turn away, 195