Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/211

THE IVORY TOWER anything; and yet I remain, don't you see? a wretched little worm."

"Deary, deary me," stared Horton, "that you should have to bring up your appreciation of it from such depths! You go in for it as you would for the electric light or the telephone, and then find half-way that you can't stand the expense and want the next-door man somehow to combine with you?"

"That's exactly it, Vinty, and you're the next-door man!"—Gray embraced the analogy with glee. "I can't stand the expense, and yet I don't for a moment deny I should immensely enjoy the convenience. I want," he asseverated, "to like my luck. I want to go in for it, as you say, with every inch of any such capacity as I have. And I want to believe in my capacity; I want to work it up and develop it—I assure you on my honour I do. I've lashed myself up into feeling that if I don't I shall be a base creature, a worm of worms, as I say, and fit only to be utterly ashamed. But that's where you come in. You'll help me to develop. To develop my capacity I mean," he explained with a wondrous candour.

Horton was now, small marvel, all clear faith; even, the cigarettes helping, to the verge again of hilarity. "Your capacity—I see. Not so much your property itself."

"Well"—Gray considered of it—"what will my property be except my capacity?" He spoke 197