“I think it’s a habit, too. It may be acquired, mayn’t it?”
“No, no,” I fulminated, “it’s precisely because it can’t be acquired that the best men—the men like ...” I stopped suddenly, impressed by the idea that the thing was out of tone. I had to assert myself more than I liked in talking to Churchill. Otherwise I should have disappeared. A word from him had the weight of three kingdoms and several colonies behind it, and I was forced to get that out of my head by making conversation a mere matter of temperament. In that I was the stronger. If I wanted to say a thing, I said it; but he was hampered by a judicial mind. It seemed, too, that he liked a dictatorial interlocutor, else he would hardly have brought himself into contact with me again. Perhaps it was new to him. My eye fell upon a couple of masks, hanging one on each side of the fireplace. The room was full of a profusion of little casts, thick with dust upon the shoulders, the hair, the eyelids, on every part that projected outward.
“By-the-bye,” I said, “that’s a death-mask of Cromwell.”
“Ah!” he answered, “I knew there was....”
He moved very slowly toward it, rather as if he did not wish to bring it within his field of view. He stopped before reaching it and pivotted slowly to face me.
“About my book,” he opened suddenly, “I have so little time.” His briskness dropped into a half complaint, like a faintly suggested avowal of impotence. “I have been at it four years now. It struck me—you seemed to coincide so singularly with my ideas.”
His speech came wavering to a close, but he recommenced it apologetically—as if he wished me to help him out.
“I went to see Smithson the publisher about it, and he said he had no objection....”
He looked appealingly at me. I kept silence.
“Of course, it’s not your sort of work. But you might try.... You see....” He came to a sustained halt.