Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/21

Rh The Brother, as if it would do them both good, only desired to draw him out. 'What you said?'

'To him—that morning.' Dane caught a far bell again and heard a slow footstep. A quiet figure passed somewhere—neither of them turned to look. What was, little by little, more present to him was the perfect taste. It was supreme—it was everywhere. 'I just dropped my burden—and he received it.'

'And was it very great?'

'Oh, such a load!' Dane laughed.

'Trouble, sorrow, doubt?'

'Oh, no; worse than that!'

'Worse?'

'"Success"—the vulgarest kind!' And Dane laughed again.

'Ah, I know that, too! No one in future, as things are going, will be able to face success.'

'Without something of this sort—never. The better it is the worse—the greater the deadlier. But my one pain here,' Dane continued, 'is in thinking of my poor friend.'

'The person to whom you've already alluded?'

'My substitute in the world. Such an unutterable benefactor. He turned up that morning when everything had somehow got on my nerves, when the whole great globe indeed, nerves, or no nerves, seemed to have squeezed itself into my study. It wasn't a question of nerves, it was a mere question of the displacement of everything—of submersion by our eternal too much. I didn't know où donner de la tête—I couldn't have gone a step further.'

The intelligence with which the Brother listened kept them as children feeding from the same bowl. 'And then you got the tip?'

'I got the tip!' Dane happily sighed.

'Well, we all get it. But I dare say differently.'

'Then how did you?'

The Brother hesitated, smiling. 'You tell me first.'