“It’s mere waste of time,” said Mr. Daniels, a little more kindly, and getting up as he spoke to show that there was nothing more doing. “If I cannot talk to you about it nobody can—and you may be certain that nobody will.”
There was a long silence between the two men. Mr. Petre broke it with a lie.
“Yes—I understand,” he said.
His guardian angel wept and his guardian Dæmon shook with laughter.
Then Mr. Petre went out in a mist of moral fog so thick that his moral hands were groping all round. He had feared something like madness in himself when his misfortune fell upon him. Now it looked as if the rest of the world were mad as well.
Meanwhile in the parlor of the bank the manager was speaking to the spare and courteous man who had introduced the great client.
“He’s an extraordinary fellow, Tommy; we’ve all heard of him. Now we’ve seen him at it—in the flesh.”
Tommy nodded and was amused. “It’s much stranger than a book,” he said.
“Yes,” answered the manager ponderously enough; and added the original words, “Life is stranger than fiction.”