“Except her,” said he.
“Not even except her,” said I. “But I've got my eye on her—and you know what that means with me.”
“Yes, I know,” drawled he. Then he added, with a curious twinkle which I do not now misunderstand: “We have somewhat the same weakness.”
“I shouldn't call it a weakness,” said I. “It's the quality that makes the chief difference between us and the common run—the fellows that have no purposes beyond getting comfortably through each day—”
“And getting real happiness,” he interrupted, with just a tinge of bitterness.
“We wouldn't think it happiness,” was my answer.
“The worse for us,” he replied. “We're under the tyranny of to-morrow—and happiness is impossible.”
“May I look at your bedroom?” I asked.
“Certainly,” he assented.
I pushed open the door he indicated. At first glimpse I was disappointed. The big room looked like a section of a hospital ward. It wasn't until I had taken a second and very careful look at the tiled floor, walls, ceiling, that I noted that those plain smooth tiles were of the very finest, were probably of his own designing, certainly had been imported from some great Dutch or German kiln. Not an inch of drapery, not a picture, nothing that could hold dust or germs anywhere; a square of sanitary matting by the bed; another square opposite an elaborate exercising machine. The bed was of the simplest metallic construction—but I noted that the metal was the finest bronze. On it was a thin, hard mattress. You could wash the big room down and out with the hose, without doing any damage.