Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/85

THE IVORY TOWER take place. The excellent fact for "the boy," who was two-and-thirty years of age and who now quite felt as if during the last few weeks he had lived through a dozen more, was thus that he was doing his uncle good and that somehow, to complete that harmony, he might feel the operation of an equal virtue. At his invitation, at his decision, the idea of some such wondrous matter as this had of course presided—for waiting and obliging good, which one was simply to open one's heart or one's hand to, had struck him ever as so little of the common stuff of life that now, at closer range, it could but figure as still more prodigious. At the same time there was nothing he dreaded, by his very nature, more than a fond fatuity, and he had imposed on himself from the first to proceed at every step as if without consideration he might well be made an ass of. It was true that even such a danger as this presented its interest—the process to which he should yield would be without precedent for him, and his imagination, thank heaven, had curiosity in a large measure for its principle; he wouldn't rush into peril, however, and flattered himself that after all he should not recognise its symptoms too late.

What he said to himself just now on the spot was, at any rate, that he should probably have been more excited if he hadn't been so amused. To be amused to a high pitch while his nearest kinsman, apparently nursing, as he had been told, 71