Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/341

THE IVORY TOWER so dreadful that it can only involve the very essence of his reputation, honour and decency, his safety in short before the law? He has been guilty of some huge irregularity, say—but which yet is a different thing from whatever irregularities he has been guilty of in respect to Gray himself; and which up to now, at the worst, have left a certain substantial part of Gray's funds intact. Say that, say that; turn it over, that is, to see if it's really wanted. I think of it as wanted because I feel the need of the effect of some acute determination play up as I consider all this—and yet also see objections; which probably will multiply as I look a little closer. I throw this off, at all events, for the moment, as I go, to be looked at straighter, to return to presently—after I've got away from it a bit, I mean from this special aspect a little, in order to come back to it fresher; picking up meanwhile two or three different matters.

The whole question of what my young man has been positively interested in, been all the while more or less definitely occupied with, I have found myself leaving, or at any rate have left, in abeyance, by reason of a certain sense of its comparative unimportance. That is I have felt my instinct to make him definitely and frankly as complete a case as possible of the sort of thing that will make him an anomaly and an outsider alike in the New York world of business, the N.Y. world of ferocious acquisition, and the world there of enormities 327