“Hope I haven't lost you anything.”
Lord Dennis shook his head, and laying his rod on the bank, said:
“Sit down and have a chat, old fellow. You don't fish, I think?”
He had not, in the least, missed the suffering behind Miltoun's mask; his eyes were still good, and there was a little matter of some twenty years' suffering of his own on account of a woman—ancient history now—which had left him quaintly sensitive, for an old man, to signs of suffering in others.
Miltoun would not have obeyed that invitation from anyone else, but there was something about Lord Dennis which people did not resist; his power lay in a dry ironic suavity which could not but persuade people that impoliteness was altogether too new and raw a thing to be indulged in.
The two sat side by side on the roots of trees. At first they talked a little of birds, and then were dumb, so dumb that the invisible creatures of the woods consulted together audibly. Lord Dennis broke that silence.
“This place,” he said, “always reminds me of Mark Twain's writings—can't tell why, unless it's the ever-greenness. I like the evergreen philosophers, Twain and Meredith. There's no salvation except through courage, though I never could stomach the 'strong man'—captain of his soul, Henley and Nietzsche and that sort—goes against the grain with me. What do you say, Eustace?”
“They meant well,” answered Miltoun, “but they protested too much.”
Lord Dennis moved his head in assent.
“To be captain of your soul!” continued Miltoun in a bitter voice; “it's a pretty phrase!”