He got up, lit the lamps, pulled down the shade. The old man lay back in his chair, his hands gripping its arms, the lamplight full upon him. Never had Queed seen him look less inspiring to affection. His black cap had gotten pushed to one side, which both revealed a considerable area of hairless head, and imparted to the whole face an odd and rakish air; the Italian eyes did not wholly match with the softness of his voice; the thin-lipped mouth under the long auburn mustache looked neither sorrowful nor kind. It was Queed's lifelong habit never to look back with vain regrets; and he needed all of his resolution now.
He stood in front of the man whose terrible secret he had surprised, and outwardly he was as calm as ever.
"Professor Nicolovius," he said, with a faint emphasis upon the name, "all this is as though it had never passed between us. And now let's go and get some supper."
Surface rose to his height and took Queed's hand in a grip like iron. His eyes glistened with sudden moisture.
"God bless you, boy! You're a man!"
It had been a memorable conversation in the life of both men, opening up obvious after-lines of more or less momentous thought. Yet each of them, as it happened, neglected these lines for a corollary detail of apparently much less seriousness, and pretty nearly the same detail at that. For Surface sat long that evening, meditating how he might most surely break up the friendship between his young friend and Sharlee Weyland; while Queed, all during his busy hours at the office, found his thoughts of Nicolovius dominated by speculations as to what Miss Weyland would say, if she knew that he had formed a lifelong compact with the man who had betrayed her father's friendship and looted her own fortune.
XXIII
Of the Bill for the Reformatory, and its Critical Situation; of West's Second Disappointment with the Rewards of Patriotism; of the Consolation he found in the most Charming Resolve in the World.