"I thought you did not like him," he said.
Tredennis paused a moment, looking down at the carpet as if deliberating.
"I don't think I do," he said at length; "but it's no fault of his—the fault lies in me. I haven't the way, and I am at a disadvantage with him. He is never at a loss, and I am; he is ready-witted and self-possessed; I am slow and rigid, and I suppose it is human that I should try to imagine at times that I am at a disadvantage only because my virtues are more solid than his. They are not more solid; they are only more clumsy and less available."
"You don't spare yourself," said the professor.
"Why should I spare myself?" said Tredennis, knitting his brows. "After all, he never spares himself. He knows better. He would be just to me. Why should I let him place me at a disadvantage again by being unjust to him? And why should we insist that the only good qualities are those which are unornamental? It is a popular fallacy. We like to believe it. It is very easy to suspect a man of being shallow because we are sure we are deep and he is unlike us. This Arbuthnot"—
"'This Arbuthnot,'" interposed the professor, with a smile. "It is curious enough to hear you entering upon a defence of 'this Arbuthnot.' You don't like him, Philip. You don't like him."
"I don't like myself," said Tredennis, "when I am compared with him; and I don't like the tendency I discover in myself, the tendency to disparage him. I should like to be fair to him, and I find it difficult."
"Upon my word," said the professor, "it is rather fine in you to make the effort, but"—giving him one of the old admiring looks—"you are always rather fine, Philip."
"It would be finer, sir," said Tredennis, coloring, "if it were not an effort."
"No," said the professor, quietly, "it would not be half so fine." And he put out his hand and let it rest upon the arm of the chair in which Tredennis sat, and so it rested as long as their talk went on.