“Because of me? Really....”
“Pooh! I had been looking for an excuse to get rid of her for some time past.”
“Were you ... m ... m ... living with her?” asked Julius, rather awkwardly.
“Yes; for health’s sake.... But as little as possible, and in memory of a friend of mine whose mistress she had been.”
“Monsieur Protos, perhaps?” ventured Julius, who was now firmly determined to stifle his indignation—his disgust—his reprobation—and to show—on this first occasion—no more of his astonishment than was necessary to make his rejoinders sufficiently lively.
“Yes, Protos,” replied Lafcadio, brimming over with laughter. “Would you like to know about Protos?”
“To know something of your friends would be perhaps a step towards knowing you.”
“He was an Italian of the name of.... My word, I’ve forgotten, and it’s of no consequence. The other boys—even the masters—never called him anything but Protos from the day he unexpectedly carried off a first for Greek composition.”
“I don’t remember ever having been first myself,” said Julius, to encourage confidence, “but, like you, I have always wanted to be friends with those who were. So Protos ...?”
“Oh! it was because of a bet he made. Before that, though he was among the elder boys, he had always been one of the last of the class—whilst I was one of the youngest—not that I worked any the better for that. Protos showed the greatest contempt for everything the masters taught us; but one day, when one of the fellows who was good at book-learning and whom he detested, said to him: ‘It’s all very fine to despise what you can’t do’ (or something to that effect), Protos got his back up, worked hard for a fortnight and to such purpose that at the next Greek composition class he went up over the other fellows’ heads and took the first place to the utter amazement of us all—of them all, I should say. As for me, I had too high an opinion of Protos to be much astonished. When he said to me: ‘I’ll show them it’s not so difficult as all that,’ I believed him.”