“Well, what’s the trouble, Carnac?” asked Fabian in a somewhat challenging voice.
“I’m going away.”
“Oh—for how long?” Fabian asked quizzically. “I don’t know—a year, perhaps. I want to make myself a better artist, and also free myself.”
Now his eyes were on Junia in her summer-time recreation, and her voice, humming a light-opera air, was floating to him through the autumn morning.
“Has something got you in its grip, then?”
“I’m the victim of a reckless past, like you.” Something provocative was in his voice and in his words.
“Was my past reckless?” asked Fabian with sullen eyes.
“Never so reckless as mine. You fought, quarrelled, hit, sold and bought again, and now you’re out against your father, fighting him.”
“I had to come out or be crushed.”
“I’m not so sure you won’t be crushed now you’re out. He plays boldly, and he knows his game. One or the other of you must prevail, and I think it won’t be you, Fabian. John Grier does as much thinking in an hour as most of us do in a month, and with Tarboe he’ll beat you dead. Tarboe is young; he’s got the vitality of a rhinoceros. He knows the business from the bark on the tree. He’s a flyer, is Tarboe, and you might have been in Tarboe’s place and succeeded to the business.”