"Then I am sorry for it," says my rival, with a strange frank smile. "For, after all, the person I refer to is myself."
"You?" says I.
The incredulity in my voice caused the man to open his snuff-box very deliberately, and to offer its contents to me.
"Perhaps, after all," says he, "there is no particular reason why you should take my meaning. For you have doubtless forgotten that I am the only person now alive who was privileged to witness a certain incident. But that of course may be a fact you may wish to forget; or the incident in question may be too trifling for your recollection. In any case I ask your pardon if I weary you."
"On the contrary," says I coldly, "you interest me vastly."
"The topic is one I should crave your pardon for mentioning," says the other, with his baffling air; "were not your interest so greatly at stake. I presume you are not unacquainted with the construction the world hath already put upon this matter?"
"I am not," says I curtly.
"Then I hope, my dear fellow," says Waring, "you will accept a service, however slight, at my hands. My testimony may be of some little value to you before a jury of your peers."
My rival held out his hand with a jovial grace. I stood looking at it, groping, with the wine still in my brain. For the candour sparkling in the fellow's eyes was a thing I had never seen in that place before; the winning earnestness of it was so hard to realize that it overwhelmed me. The bitter truth suddenly poured into my heart like a torrent.
"My God," says I, "all this time I have been weighing your character by the measure of my own. Is it not ever the fate of the mean and the little to do so? You have been the phantom, from whom we have fled. The phantom, however, was not in a chaise and pair, but in our own hearts!"