Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/296

THE IVORY TOWER think I really must find right, of Horton's having done something for him, in their boyish time, something important and gallant, rather showy, but at all events really of moment, which has always been present to Gray. This I must find—it need present no difficulty; with something in the general way of their having been at school together—in Switzerland, with the service rendered in Switzerland, say on a holiday cours among the mountains, when Horty has fished Gray out of a hole, I don't mean quite a crevasse, but something like, or come to his aid in a tight place of some sort, and at his own no small risk, to bring him to safety. In fine it's something like having saved his life, though that has a tiresome little old romantic and conventional note. However I will make the thing right and give it the right nuance; remember that it is all allusional only now and a matter of reference on Gray's part. What must have further happened, I think, is that Horty has been in Europe again, in much later years, after College, indeed only a very few years previous, and has met Gray again and they have renewed together; to the effect of his apprehension of Gray's (to him) utterly queer and helpless and unbusinesslike, unfinancial, type; and of Gray's great admiration of everything of the opposite sort in him—combined, that is, with other very attractive (as they appear) qualities. He has made Gray think a lot about the wonderful 282