Page:The Yellow Book - 02.djvu/376

330 us his company; we started afresh, and my hope of the secret returned. Gravener remained silent however, and I pretended to go to sleep; in fact, in discouragement, I really dozed. When I opened my eyes I found he was looking at me with an injured air. He tossed away with some vivacity the remnant of a cigarette and then he said: "If you're not too sleepy I want to put you a case." I answered that I would make every effort to attend, and I felt it was going to be interesting when he went on: "As I told you a while ago, Lady Coxon, poor dear, is a maniac." His tone had much behind it—was full of promise. I inquired if her ladyship's misfortune were a feature of her malady or only of her character, and he replied that it was a product of both. The case he wanted to put me was a matter on which it would interest him to have the impression—the judgment, he might also say—of another person. "I mean of the average intelligent man," he said: "but you see I take what I can get." There would be the technical, the strictly legal view; then there would be the way the question would strike a man of the world. He had lighted another cigarette while he talked, and I saw he was glad to have it to handle when he brought out at last, with a laugh slightly artificial: "In fact it's a subject on which Miss Anvoy and I are pulling different ways."

"And you want me to pronounce between you? I pronounce in advance for Miss Anvoy."

"In advance—that's quite right. That's how I pronounced when I asked her to marry me. But my story will interest you only so far as your mind is not made up." Gravener puffed his cigarette a minute and then continued: "Are you familiar with the idea of the Endowment of Research?"

"Of Research?" I was at sea for a moment.

"I give you Lady Coxon's phrase. She has it on the brain." Rh