“It wasn’t your doing,” said Temple. “Nothing ever was your doing. You are always in the right—Findlay the all-right.”
Findlay’s attention was concentrated upon the lamp. His hand was unsteady, and he had some difficulty in turning up the wicks; one got jammed down and the other flared furiously. When at last it was lit and turned up, he came up to Temple. “Take your coat off, old man, and have some more whiskey,” he said. “That was a ripping little girl in the skirt dance.”
“Fools to quarrel,” said Temple, slowly, and then woke up to Findlay’s words. “Heigh?”
“Take off your coat and sit down,” said Findlay, moving up the little metal table and producing cigars and a syphon and whiskey. “That lamp gives an infernally bad light, but it is all I have. Something wrong with the oil. Did you notice the drudge of that stone-smashing trick?”
Temple remained erect and gloomy, staring into the fire. “Fools to quarrel,” he said. Findlay was now half drunk, and his finesse began to leave him. Temple had been drinking heavily, and was now in a curious rambling stage. And Findlay’s one idea now was to close this curious reunion.
“There’s no woman worth a man’s friendship,” said Temple, abruptly.
He sat down in an easy chair, poured out and drank a dose of whiskey and lithia. The idea of friendship took possession of him, and he became reminiscent of student days and student adventures. For some time it was, “Do you remember” this, and “Do you remember” that. And Findlay grew cheerful again.
“They were glorious times,” said Findlay, pouring whiskey into Temple’s glass.
Then Temple startled him by abruptly reverting to that bitter quarrel. “No woman in the world,” he said. “Curse them!”
He began to laugh stupidly. “After all—” he said, “in the end.”