Page:The Outcry (London, Methuen & Co., 1911).djvu/103

Rh terrace, only stopping on his way to light a cigarette from a matchbox on a small table. It was but after doing so that he made the remark: "Ah, Mr. Bender may easily be too much for you!"

"That makes me the more sorry, sir," said his visitor, "not to have been enough for you!"

"I risk it, at any rate," Lord John went on—"I put you, Bender, the question of whether you wouldn't 'love,' as you say, to acquire that Moretto."

Mr. Bender's large face had a commensurate gaze. "As I say? I haven't said anything of the sort!"

"But you do 'love,' you know," Lord John slightly overgrimaced.

"I don't when I don't want to. I'm different from most people—I can love or not as I like. The trouble with that Moretto," Mr. Bender continued, "is that it ain't what I'm after."

His "after" had somehow, for the ear, the vividness of a sharp whack on the resisting surface of things, and was concerned doubtless in Lord John's speaking again across to their host. "The worst he can do for me, you see, is to refuse it."