"Your letter came yesterday," he began abruptly.
"Did it? And you have come to tell me to—to tell me to mind my own business? as I said you might?"
"No, indeed, I haven't. But I can't do it, all the same—drag your friend in on the Myriad."
"Was Mr. Lansdale mistaken? Don't you need more capital to go on with?"
"Need it?—well, yes; rather. But I can't take your Mr. Grimsby's money."
"Why not?"
"Because"—the low-pitched hollow of the big lounging-chair seemed to put him at a disadvantage, and he struggled up out of it to tramp back and forth before her—"well, in the first place, because he is your friend; and if he wasn't, I have no security to offer him—collateral, I suppose he'd call it."
"He is not exactly my friend, within your meaning of the word; and he will not ask you to secure him."
He stopped and looked down upon her. She was shading her eyes from the sheen of the reading-lamp and turning the leaves of the book.
"What does he know about the Little Myriad? anything more than you have told him?"