Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/253

THE IVORY TOWER where everyone else, where his uncle and Rosanna, where Mr. Gaw and even Miss Mumby, where splendid Vinty, whom he so looked to, and awfully nice Davey Bradham, whom he so took to, were concerned. It all came back to the question of terms and to the perception, in varying degrees, on the part of these persons, of his own; for there were somehow none by which Mr. Crick was penetrable that would really tell anything about him, and he could wonder in freedom if he wasn't then to know too that last immunity from any tax on his fortune which would consist in his having never to wince. Against wincing in other relations than this one he was prepared, he only desired, to take his precautions—visionary precautions in those connections truly swarming upon him; but apparently he was during these first days of the mere grossness of his reality to learn something of the clear state of seeing every fond sacrifice to superstition that he could think of thrust back at him. If he could but have brought his visitor to say after twenty-four hours of him "Well, you're the damnedest little idiot I've ever had to pretend to hold commerce with!" that would on the spot have pressed the spring of his rich sacrificial "Oh I must be, I must be!—how can I not abjectly and gratefully be?" Something at least would so have been done to placate the jealous gods. But instead of that the grossness of his reality just flatly included this supremely 239