"Well, you can thank whichever of your stars has brought you to this conclusion," growled the Professor. "I suppose I'll pull through somehow financially," the restless visitor went on, pacing the floor—"anyway, for a few years; there may be something more to be squeezed out of Derringham. I must see."
"Well, if you are not marrying that need not distress you," Cheiron consoled him with. "Those things only matter if a man has a son."
John Derringham stopped abruptly in his walk and looked at his old master.
His words gave him a strange twinge, but he crushed it down, and went on again:
"It is a curse, this want of money," he said. "It makes a man do base things that his soul revolts against." And then, in his restless moving, he absently picked up a volume of Aristotle, and his eye caught this sentence: "The courageous man therefore faces danger and performs acts of courage for the sake of what is noble."
And what did an honorable man do? But this question he would not go further into.
"You were out very late last night, John," Mr. Carlyon said presently. "I left this window open for you on purpose. The garden does one good sometimes. You were not lonely, I hope?"
"No," said John Derringham; but he would not look at his old master, for he knew very well he should see a whimsical sparkle in his eyes.
Mr. Carlyon, of course, must be aware of Halcyone's night wandering proclivities. And if there had been nothing to conceal John Derringham would have liked to have sat down now and rhapsodized all about his darling to his old friend, who adored her, too, and knew and appreciated all her points. He felt bitterly that Fate had not been as kind to him as she might have been. However, there was nothing for it, so he turned the conversation and tried to make himself grow as interested in a question of foreign policy as he would have been able to be, say, a year ago. And then he went out for a walk.
And Cheiron sat musing in his chair, as was his habit.