Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/13

Rh 'Are there three?'

'I lay for four in all.'

His master had, at any rate, caught his thought. 'Sacrificing the three to the one, you mean? Oh, I'm not going to her!' Brown's famous 'thoroughness'—his great virtue—had never been so dreadful. 'Then where are you going?'

Dane sat down to his table and stared at his ragged phrase. There is a happy land—far, far away! He chanted it like a sick child and knew that for a minute Brown never moved. During this minute he felt between his shoulders the gimlet of criticism.

'Are you quite sure you're all right?'

'It's my certainty that overwhelms me, Brown. Look about you and judge. Could anything be more "right," in the view of the envious world, than everything that surrounds us here; that immense array of letters, notes, circulars; that pile of printers' proofs, magazines, and books; these perpetual telegrams, these impending guests; this retarded, unfinished, and interminable work? What could a man want more?'

'Do you mean there's too much, sir?'—Brown had some times these flashes.

'There's too much. There's too much. But you can't help it, Brown.'

'No, sir,' Brown assented. 'Can't you?'

'I'm thinking—I must see. There are hours!' Yes, there were hours, and this was one of them: he jerked himself up for another turn in his labyrinth, but still not touching, not even again meeting, his interlocutor's eye. If he was a genius for any one he was a genius for Brown; but it was terrible what that meant, being a genius for Brown. There had been times when he had done full justice to the way it kept him up; now, however, it was almost the worst of the avalanche. 'Don't trouble about me,' he went on insincerely, and looking askance through his window again at the bright and beautiful world. 'Perhaps it will rain—that may not be over. I do