Mr. Ferguson was distinctly uncomfortable. A pair of very steady and watchful grey eyes were fixed upon his. He was being cross-examined and not clumsily, and by a boy; and all of this he fretfully resented. To do the cross-examining was his function in life, not the other fellow’s. Besides, how was he to answer that word significant? Such a good word! For it opened no glimpses of the questioner’s point of view and was a trap for the questioned.
“Was it significant?” he asked.
Paul suddenly smiled, and Mr. Ferguson was more perplexed than ever. The boy was not obtuse—that was clear. It was no less clear, then, that he attached some quite special significance of his own invention to the incident he had related. Monsieur Ravenel was in hiding—that’s what the incident signified. How had Paul missed it? What strange amulet was he wearing that saved him from the desolating truth?
“Did you ever read ‘Balaustion’s Adventure’?” Paul inquired, and Mr. Ferguson jumped.
“I wish you wouldn’t spring from one subject to another like that,” he answered, testily.
“I am on the same subject,” said Paul.
“Well, then, I did. I used it as a crib for the Alcestis when I was at school.”
“A pretty good crib, too.”
“Very.”
“But the translation of the Alcestis isn’t the whole of the poem, is it? The Alcestis makes things pretty black for Admetus, doesn’t it? You’d call him a bit of a rotter, wouldn’t you? That is, if you take the first surface meaning of the play. But Balaustion found another meaning underneath which transfigures Admetus, turns the black to white. Well, humbly, but just as confidently, I look underneath the first obvious meaning of what I told you. That’s disgrace, isn’t it? Let’s be frank about it! A man in disgrace shunning his friends! There’s the surface reading. And there’s no other—except mine.”