“Oh you’re the best.”
“I?”
“You’re the best,” Vanderbank simply repeated. “It’s at all events most extraordinary,” he declared. “But I make you out on the whole better than I do Mr. Longdon.”
“Ah aren’t we very much the same—simple lovers of life? That is of that finer essence of it which appeals to the consciousness—”
“The consciousness?”—his companion took up his hesitation.
“Well, enlarged and improved.”
The words had made on Mitchy’s lips an image by which his friend appeared for a moment held. “One doesn’t really know quite what to say or to do.”
“Oh you must take it all quietly. You’re of a special class; one of those who, as we said the other day—don’t you remember?—are a source of the sacred terror. People made in such a way must take the consequences; just as people must take them,” Mitchy went on, “who are made as I am. So cheer up!”
Mitchy, uttering this incitement, had moved to the empty chair by the window, in which he presently was sunk; and it might have been in emulation of his previous strolling and straying that Vanderbank himself now began to revolve. The meditation he next threw out, however, showed a certain resistance to Mitchy’s advice. “I’m glad at any rate I don’t deprive her of a fortune.”
“You don’t deprive her of mine of course,” Mitchy answered from the chair; “but isn’t her enjoyment of Mr. Longdon’s at least a good deal staked after all on your action?”