—“like Montresor. Imagine that you’d never been at the Near Oriental—never heard of the place. I’m sure I often wish I hadn’t,” the Governor’s voice came ruefully out of the dusk. “Then, instead of this eternal sparring—”
“My only refuge,” I thought, “and he’s trying to turn me out of it!”
—“there might surely have been something distinctly resembling friendship between us?” he said.
I said obstinately, “Might there? I don’t know.”
He moved. There wasn’t enough light to see his face. Only his collar made a white blur against the branch, and the broad slope of his shoulders showed dark against the sky that had deepened from lilac to purple.
“But I know,” he said quietly, “that you could—that you could be——”
He paused.
“Well?” I said, rather uncomfortably. “I could be what?”
“Rather a little brick to me if you chose,” said the Governor.
I am sure it slipped out without his meaning it to. He would have been ready to go on arguing quite logically about “how much more sensible” et cetera.... How there was “absolutely no valid reason why it shouldn’t” and so forth ... for another hour!