“Luney,” he said, calling him again by that name with which he had always addressed him, “you have always been beyond me, but you have never seemed quite so far beyond me as you do now. Your actions prove you to be out of your mind, but the odd thing is that never in all the years I have known you, have you talked to me as you have talked to-night. You talk to me now, old boy, just as I should expect some of those wise old Greek Johnnies to talk to their pals. And yet you give yourself no airs of saying anything out of the common; and the way you listen to what I say to you and the way you draw me out, gives me the kind of feeling that I myself am a sort of chap like old What’s-his-name. Words have never come to me so easily as they have to-night; and as for my mind, I am sure it has never been half so bright. You seem to make me feel, old boy, that every word you use has a kind of inner meaning; and I understand enough of the meaning inside to know that there is still another meaning inside of that. I don’t know where you have been, or what you have done, but I am sure the change that has taken place in you is very wonderful.”
“The Giver of all good has at last given the light to your eyes and mine,” said William Jordan. “And speech to our lips, and hearing to our ears.”
“And the most wonderful thing about you, old boy,” said his friend, “is that with all your strangeness I know what you mean. You sit there talking for all the world as if nothing had happened to you. And yet if you don’t mind my saying it, a week ago you were up so high that I thought you could never come down again.”
“Perhaps it was,” said William Jordan, “that I was then besieged by strange spirits. Perhaps it was, Jimmy, that my little treatise could not have got itself written without their aid.”
“And now you have written it, old boy, or now, as you put it, it has got itself written, what do you intend to do with it?” asked Jimmy Dodson eagerly.
“It is my intention to give it to the world,” said William Jordan.
The calm assurance with which the author announced this intention appeared to startle his friend.
“Yes—of course,” said Jimmy Dodson nervously; “yes—of course.”
A sequel so natural to the strange labours of which he had been the witness, had, somewhat curiously, never shaped itself in his mind.
“Yes—of course,” he reiterated, “of course you will give it to the world. That is to say, you will have it published by somebody. Have you thought which firm you will try first?”