Meanwhile, the waiting was an occupation in itself. Millner looked about his room with new eyes. Since the first thrill of initiation into its complicated comforts—the shower-bath, the telephone, the many-jointed reading-lamp and the vast mirrored presses through which he was always hunting his scant outfit—Millner’s room had interested him no more than a railway-carriage in which he might have been travelling. But now it had acquired a sort of historic significance as the witness of the astounding change in his fate. It was Corsica, it was Brienne—it was the kind of spot that posterity might yet mark with a tablet. Then he reflected that he should soon be leaving it, and the lustre of its monumental mahogany was veiled in pathos. Why indeed should he linger on in bondage? He perceived with a certain surprise that the only thing he should regret would be leaving Draper. ...
It was odd, it was inconsequent, it was almost exasperating, that such a regret should obscure his triumph. Why in the world should he suddenly take to regretting Draper? If there were any logic in human likings, it should be to Mr. Spence that he inclined. Draper, dear lad, had the illusion of an “intellectual sympathy” between them; but that, Millner knew, was an affair of reading and not of character. Draper’s temerities would always be of that kind; whereas his own—well, his own, put to the proof, had now definitely classed him with Mr. Spence rather than with Mr. Spence’s son. It was a consequence of this new condition—of his having thus distinctly and irrevocably classed himself—that, when Draper at length brought upon the scene his shy shamble and his wistful smile, Millner, for the first time, had to steel himself against them instead of yielding to their charm.
In the new order upon which he had entered, one principle of the old survived: the point of honour between allies. And Millner had promised Mr. Spence to speak to Draper about his Bible Class. ...
Draper, thrown back in his chair, and swinging a loose leg across a meagre knee, listened with his habitual gravity. His downcast eyes seemed to pursue the vision which Millner’s words evoked; and the words, to their speaker, took on a new sound as that candid consciousness refracted them.
“You know, dear boy, I perfectly see your father’s point. It’s naturally distressing to him, at this particular time, to have any hint of civil war leak out—”
Draper sat upright, laying his lank legs knee to knee.
“That’s it, then? I thought that was it!”
Millner raised a surprised glance. “ What’s it?”
“That it should be at this particular time—”
“Why, naturally, as I say! Just as he’s making, as it were, his public profession of faith. You know, to men like your father convictions are irreducible elements—they can’t be split up, and differently combined. And your exegetical scruples seem to him to strike at the very root of his convictions.”