“Yes, I will go. But—pardon me—not as your friend. Let us be plain with each other. I never met a man of your stamp before—”
“A professional gambler—yes? Bien?”
“You interest me; I like you; you have great cleverness—”
“A priest once told me I had a great brain-there is a difference. Well?”
“You are like no man I ever met before. Yours is a life like none I ever knew. I would rather talk with you than with any other man in the country, and yet—”
“And yet you would not take me to your home? That is all right. I expect nothing. I accept the terms. I know what I am and what you are. I like men who are square. You would go out of your way to do me a good turn.”
It was on his tongue to speak of Katy Cline, but he hesitated: it was not fair to the girl, he thought, though what he had intended was for her good. He felt he had no right to assume that Liddall knew how things were. The occasion slipped by.
But the same matter had been in his mind when, later, he asked, “What is the worst thing that can happen to a man?”
Liddall looked at him long, and then said: “To stand between two fires.”
Pierre smiled: it was an answer after his own heart. Liddall remembered it very well in the future.