He went over a good deal of ground mentally as he sat in the deepening dusk, and he thought clearly and dispassionately, as was his habit when he allowed himself to think at all. By the time he had arrived at his conclusions it was quite dark. Then he threw the end of his last cigar away and arose, and there was no denying that he was pale still, and wore a curiously intense expression.
"If there is one thing neither man nor devil can put a stop to," he said, "it is an experience such as that. It will go on to one of two ends,—it will kill her, or she will kill it. The wider of the mark they shoot, the easier for her; and as for me," he added, with a rather faint and dreary smile, "perhaps it suits me well enough to be merely an alleviating circumstance. It's all I'm good for. Let them think as they please."
And he brushed an atom of cigar-ash from his sleeve with his rather too finely feminine hand, and walked away.
CHAPTER XVI.
He paid the professor another visit a few days later, and afterwards another, and another.
"What," said the professor, at the end of his second visit, "is it ten o'clock? I assure you it is usually much later than this when it strikes ten."
"Thank you," said Arbuthnot. "I never heard that civility accomplished so dexterously before. It is perfectly easy to explain the preternatural adroitness of speech on which Mrs. Amory prides herself. But don't be too kind to me, professor, and weaken my resolution not to present myself unless I have just appropriated an idea from somewhere. If I should appear some day au naturel, not having taken the precaution to attire myself in the mature reflections of my acquaintance, I shouldn't pay you for the wear and tear of seeing me, I'll confess beforehand."
"I once told you," said the professor to Tredennis, after the fourth visit, "that I was not fond of him, but there had been times when I had been threatened with it. This is one of the times. Ah!" with a sigh of fatigue, "I understand the attraction—I understand it."