“The same may possibly apply to me.”
There was a little pause, during which he lighted his pipe.
“To a certain extent,” he said in emendation. “Of course, my real object, as you no doubt know, is to get away from England until my father's death has been forgotten. My own conscience is quite clear, but—”
Jack Meredith drew in his legs and leant forward.
“But,” he said, interrupting, and yet not interrupting—“but the public mind is an unclean sink. Everything that goes into it comes out tainted. Therefore it is best only to let the public mind have the scourings, as it were, of one's existence. If they get anything better—anything more important—it is better to skedaddle until it has run through and been swept away by a flow of social garbage.”
Guy Oscard grunted with his pipe between his teeth, after the manner of the stoic American-Indian—a grunt that seemed to say, “My pale-faced brother has spoken well; he expresses my feelings.” Then he gave further vent to the deliberate expansiveness which was his.
“What I cannot stand,” he said, “are the nudges and the nods and the surreptitious glances of the silly women who think that one cannot see them looking. I hate being pointed out.”
“Together with the latest skirt-dancing girl, and the last female society-detective, with the blushing honours of the witness-box thick upon her,” suggested Jack Meredith.
“Yes,” muttered Guy. He turned with a sort of simple wonder, and looked at Meredith curiously. He had never been understood so quickly before. He had never met man or woman possessing in so marked a degree that subtle power of going right inside the mind of another and feeling the things that are there—the greatest power of all—the power that rules the world; and it is only called Sympathy.
“Well,” said the voice of Durnovo through the darkness, “I don't mind admitting that all I want is the money. I want to get out of this confounded country; but I don't want to leave till I have made a fortune.”