"What! Is that the way you flout a man's hospitality?" demanded Lansdale, in mock displeasure.
"No; I don't mean to do that. But I'm drunken with feasting now, and if I put wine into me I shall pawn the coat off my back before midnight for a stake to play with."
Lansdale smiled. "I'll see that you don't have to. Turn up your glass."
But Jeffard was obstinate, and sat munching raisins while Lansdale sipped his wine. When the waiter brought the cigars he came out of his reverie to say, "You want to live, don't you, Lansdale?"
The potential man of letters took time to think about it. "I suppose I do; else I shouldn't be starving to death in Denver," he admitted finally.
"And there is nothing but the lack of a little ready money that keeps you from giving the Boston doctor's prescription a fair trial. If I had the money I believe I'd change places with you; that is, I'd give you the money in exchange for your good chance of being able to shuffle off mortality without the help of extraneous means. I think I've had enough of it."
"Do you? That proves how little a man has learned when he thinks he has arrived. Now pull yourself together, and tell me what you really would do if you became suddenly rich."
"How rich?"
"Oh, make it a comfortable figure; say eight or ten thousand a month for an income."
"I'd do what I said I should,—change places with you; only I suppose that wouldn't be possible. Failing that"—He pondered over it for a moment, balancing his fork on the edge of his plate the while. "A few weeks ago I should have mapped out a future worth talking about. I had a lucid day, in which the things that make for ambition of the better sort had their inning. If you had asked me such a question then, I should doubtless have told you that I should try to realize the ideals of other days; to walk uprightly, and to hold great wealth as it should be held—in trust for the good of one's kind; to win the love of the ideal woman, perhaps; and, having won it, to sit at her feet until I had learned how to be God's almoner."