“Ah, I regret that less than other things,” Grimshaw said.
“Because you asked him first for the service of a light?”
“Why,” Grimshaw answered, “in this case I had really need of a light. But I confess that quite often I have asked poor men for lights when I had my own, that I might give them a taste of good tobacco.”
“And why did you first ask them for a light?” the priest asked. “Was it that they might not be demoralized?”
“I hardly know,” Grimshaw said. “I think it was to get into touch with them—to precede the pleasure of the tobacco with the pleasure of having done me a service. One doesn’t inquire so closely into one’s motives.”
“Ah,” the black pope answered, “from that alone one may perceive that you are not English, for the English do not, like you, seek to come into contact with their fellow-beings or with persons whom they may meet by chance. They are always afraid of entanglements—that it may be used against them.”
Robert Grimshaw leaned forward over his stick. It was pleasant to him to come into contact with this representative of an unseen world—to come for a moment out of the ring, very visible and circumscribed, in which he moved. It gave him, as it were, a chance to stand upon a little hill and look down into the misty “affair” in which he was so deeply engaged.
“Then you don’t advise me,” he said suddenly in English, “to pull up my sticks—to wash my hands of things and people and affections?”
“Assuredly,” the priest said, “I do not advise you to give away your little dog for fear that one day it will die and rend your heart.”
Grimshaw looked meditatively at Peter, who was flapping through the grass, his nose tracking some delicious odour beyond the path just opposite them.