"I might have had."
"You will have—you can't help it."
"Not without the man I want in the bunk next mine," said Belden Lorimer, gazing through half-shut eyes at nothing in particular.
Richard experienced the severest pang of regret he had yet known.
"If that's true, old Lorry," said he slowly, "I'm sorrier than I can tell you."
"Then—come along!" Lorimer looked waked up at last. He laid a persuasive hand on Richard's arm.
There was a moment of tensity. Then:
"If I should do it," said Richard, regarding steadily a dog in the road some hundred yards ahead, "would you feel any respect whatever for me?"
"Dead loads of it, I assure you."
"Sure of that?"