"What a comfort you are!" I cried with a harassed laugh.
"What the devil made you get into it?" he growled.
"Fate," I told him.
"It's a poor fate that doesn't work both ways," he observed.
"I suppose I sound to you like either a brute or a cad or both," I pursued. "But the fact is, Dibdin, I am not a marrying man. The girl in question has nothing to do with it. She's an admirable, a splendid girl, far too good for the likes of me. But I simply hate the thought of marriage—of owing duties to anybody. I want to be free to do absolutely as I please, to go off with you to the Solomon Islands, or China or Popocatepetl if I want to, or to run after some first edition if I feel inclined. In short, I don't want to bother about wives or children or whooping cough or measles, or have them bother about me. Would you call that selfish?"
"Damnably," said Dibdin without emotion.
"Well, then, that is what I am," I retorted warmly, "and it is no use trying to change. It takes myriad kinds to make a world. I am one kind—that kind."
"No," said Dibdin gravely, "no—I think you're some other kind."
"This eternal, beautiful, boundless freedom," I went on, ignoring him—"surely it is good that some mortals should have it, Dibdin—and I am losing it."
"Three weeks off, did you say—the obsequies?" he queried.