“I feel it, I assure you. Because we are fast friends, and because you love and trust me, as I love and trust you. Both hands, Jack.”
As each stands looking into the other’s eyes, and as the uncle holds the nephew’s hands, the uncle thus proceeds:
“You know now, don’t you, that even a poor monotonous chorister and grinder of music—in his niche—may be troubled with some stray sort of ambition, aspiration, restlessness, dissatisfaction, what shall we call it?”
“Yes, dear Jack.”
“And you will remember?”
“My dear Jack, I only ask you, am I likely to forget what you have said with so much feeling?”
“Take it as a warning, then.”
In the act of having his hands released, and of moving a step back, Edwin pauses for an instant to consider the application of these last words. The instant over, he says, sensibly touched:
“I am afraid I am but a shallow, surface kind of fellow, Jack, and that my headpiece is none of the best. But I needn’t say I am young; and perhaps I shall not grow worse as I grow older. At all events, I hope I have something impressible within me, which feels—deeply feels—the disinterestedness of your painfully laying your inner self bare, as a warning to me.”
Mr. Jasper’s steadiness of face and figure becomes so marvellous that his breathing seems to have stopped.