Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 1.djvu/184

 'I don't know what you are talking about,' said Hyacinth.

'Well, now the other matter—the International—are you very deep in that?' the fiddler went on, as if he had not heard him.

'Did Pinnie tell you also about that?' his visitor asked.

'No, our friend Eustace has told me a good deal. He knows you have put your head into something. Besides, I see it,' said Mr. Vetch.

'How do you see it, pray?'

'You have got such a speaking eye. Any one can tell, to look at you, that you have become a nihilist, that you're a member of a secret society. You seem to say to every one, "Slow torture won't induce me to tell where it meets!"'

'You won't get me an order, then?' Hyacinth said, in a moment.

'My dear boy, I offer you a box. I take the greatest interest in you.'

They smoked together a while, and at last Hyacinth remarked, 'It has nothing to do with the International.'

'Is it more terrible—more deadly secret?' his companion inquired, looking at him with extreme seriousness.

'I thought you pretended to be a radical,' answered Hyacinth.

'Well, so I am—of the old-fashioned, constitutional, milk-and-water, jog-trot sort. I'm not an exterminator.'

'We don't know what we may be when the time comes,' Hyacinth rejoined, more sententiously than he intended.

'Is the time coming, then, my dear boy?'