Adrian reflected silently upon the episodes on the Cherokee Rose, but kept his own counsel, while the smoke curled softly above the duplicate heads.
“When I saw them together,” observed Randal, “he impressed me as being a veritable despot, and in a queer way, too. I can’t understand his satisfaction in it. He arrogated the largest liberty to criticize her views and actions, as if his dictum were the fiat of last resort. I tell you now, kid, criticism and cavil in themselves are incompatible with love. No man can depreciate and adore at the same time the same object. When he thinks the feet of his idol are of clay the whole structure might as well come down at once. He seemed to have a certain perversity, and this is a connubial foible I have seen in better men, too; a tendency to contradict her in small, immaterial matters for the sheer pleasure of contrariety, I suppose,—to oppose her, to balk her, merely because he could with impunity. I imagine he has enjoyed a long lease of this impunity because his perversity has attained such unusual proportions, and her plunges of opposition had the style of sudden revolt rather than the practiced habit of contention. She has lived a life of repression and submission with him. Her identity is pretty much annihilated. The Paula of her earlier days is nearly all disappeared.”
For a few moments Adrian said nothing in response to this keen analysis of character, which corresponded so well to his longer opportunity of observation, but sat silently eyeing the fire in serious thought.
Suddenly he broke out with impassioned eagerness.
“Randal, you are my own twin brother——”
“I am obliged to admit it,” interpolated Randal flippantly.
“—my other self. The tie that binds us seems to me closer than with other brothers. We came into the world together; we have lived hand in hand almost all our lives; we even look alike.”
“And make a precious good job of it too,” declared Randal gaily.
“We feel alike; we believe alike; we have been educated in the same traditions; we respect the sanctities of the old fireside teachings; we have not strayed after strange gods.”
Randal had taken his cigar from his lips and in his half recumbent position was gazing keenly at his brother.