"Oh, yes." Jake's voice was dead level. His eyes looked at Bunny, but they saw beyond him. "I know all about that. I know--just what she wants. She wants a watchdog, one that'll fetch and carry and accept all benefits with humility. She's lonely now; but she won't be lonely long. She'll have a crowd round her--a set of fashionable, gibbering monkeys, who will sneer at the watch-dog, the meek and patient hanger-on, the adjunct at every party, who lives on his mistress's smile and doesn't object to her kick. That's what she wants. And that, my son, is the one thing she's not going to get."
"But what on earth do you want, Jake?" burst from Bunny, half-startled, half-exasperated. "You needn't be that. You never could be that. Her idea was to make you independent."
"Oh yes, I know." Jake's mouth twisted a little. "She is mighty generous. She figured to hand over half her fortune by deed of gift."
"And you wouldn't have it?" Bunny almost gasped.
"I wouldn't touch it," Jake said, with a sound that was oddly like a suppressed laugh in his throat.
"But why in wonder not?" Bunny stared at him as if he thought he had gone suddenly mad. "We've taken oceans of things from you."
"That's different," said Jake.
"How different? Make me understand, Jake! I've a right to understand." Bunny's voice was imperious.
Jake looked at him. There was actually a smile in his eyes, but it was a smile of self-ridicule. "You asked me just now what I wanted," he said. "I'll tell you. I want a woman who loves me well enough to chuck up everything--everything, mind you--and follow me barefoot to the other end of the world." He broke into a laugh that seemed to hurt him. "And that," he said, "is the one thing I'm not going to get. Now do you understand?"
"Not quite, Jake. Not quite." Bunny spoke almost diffidently. He looked back at Jake with awe in his eyes. "You think she doesn't love you well enough. Is that it?"