"If I am any judge of human nature," he said, "you are in a bad way. I can see sufficient of you to discern that from a social point of view you are a ruin, a very wreck of respectability, if your lines ever crossed in that direction. In which respect I, who was once a gentleman, and am still, cannot deny that there is something of moral kinship between us. This confers distinction upon you--upon me, a touch of obloquy. But I am old enough not to be squeamish. We must take the world as we find it--a villainous world! What say you?"
"A villainous world! Go on talking."
Vanbrugh stood with his face towards the House of White Shadows, watching for the signal he had asked the Advocate to give him. Gautran, facing the man upon whom he had forced his company, stood, therefore, with his back to the villa, the lights in which he had not yet seen.
"Our condition may be borne," continued Vanbrugh, "with greater or lesser equanimity, so long as we feed the body--the quality of our food being really of no great importance, so far as the tissues are concerned; but when the mind is thrown off its balance, as I see by your eyes is the case with you, the condition of the man becomes serious. What is it you fear?"
"Nothing human."
"Yet you are at war with society."
"I was; but I am a free man now."
"You have been in peril, then--plainly speaking, a gaol-bird. What matters? The world is apt to be too censorious; I find no fault with you for your misfortune. Such things happen to the best of us. But you are free now, you say, and you fear nothing in human shape. What is it, then, you do fear?"
"Were you ever followed by a spirit?" asked Gautran, in a hoarse whisper.
"A moment," said Vanbrugh. "Your question startles me. I have about me two mouthfuls of an elixir without which life would not be worth the living. Share and share alike."