“But is it possible that you don’t see what a terrible risk you run?” he asked. “To see her again, to be with her like that, having to look at her—I saw her this afternoon by the way, hardly human—may not that so easily revive again all that you felt before? It is too dangerous: much too dangerous.”
“There is not the slightest risk,” he said, “everything within me is utterly and absolutely indifferent to her. I don’t even hate her: if I hated her there might be a possibility of my again loving her. As it is, the thought of her does not arouse in me any emotion of any kind. And really such stupendous calmness deserves to be rewarded. I respect colossal things like that.”
He finished his whisky as he spoke, and instantly poured himself out another glass.
“That’s the fourth,” said his friend.
“Is it? I never count. It shows a sordid attention to uninteresting detail. Funnily enough too, alcohol does not have the smallest effect on me now.”
“Why drink then?”
“Because if I give it up this entrancing vividness of colour and clarity of outline is a little diminished.”
“Can’t be good for you,” said the doctor.
Dick laughed.