"Look here! Take another!" and he pulled out his big leather case.
"Here! Take one of these! They are good ones!"
Arvid, who, unfortunately, could not bear to hurt anybody's feelings, accepted it gratefully, like a hand offered in reconciliation.
"Now, old boy," continued Charles Nicholas, talking lightly and pleasantly, an accomplishment at which he was an expert. "Let's go to the nearest restaurant and have lunch. Come along!"
Arvid, unused to friendliness, was so touched by these advances that he hastily pressed his brother's hand and hurried away through the shop without taking any notice of Andersson, and out into the street.
The brother felt embarrassed; he could not understand it. To run away when he had been asked to lunch! To run away when he was not in the least angry with him! To run away! No dog would have run away if a piece of meat had been thrown to him!
"He's a queer chap!" he muttered, stamping the floor. Then he went to his desk, screwed up the seat of his chair as high as it would go and climbed up. From this raised position he was in the habit of contemplating men and circumstances as from a higher point of view, and he found them small; yet not so small that he could not use them for his purposes.
CHAPTER III
THE ARTISTS' COLONY
It was between eight and nine o'clock on the same beautiful May morning. Arvid Falk, after the scene with his brother, was strolling through the streets, dissatisfied with himself, his brother, and the whole world. He would have preferred to see the sky overcast, to be in bad company. He did not believe that he was a blackguard, but he was disappointed with the part he had played; he was accustomed to be severe on himself, and it had always been drummed into him that his brother was a kind of stepfather to whom he owed great respect, not to say reverence. But he was worried and depressed by other thoughts as well. He had neither money nor prospect of work. The last contingency was, perhaps, the worse of the two, for to him, with his exuberant imagination, idleness was a dangerous enemy.