“Felix, are you asleep?”
“No, sir, only resting.”
“Have you been at work?”
“Decidedly; I rowed across the lake and back.”
“Alone?”
“Gladys went with me, singing like a mermaid all the way.”
“Ah!”
Both men were lounging in the twilight; but there was a striking difference in their way Of doing it. Canaris lay motionless on a couch, his head pillowed on his arms, enjoying the luxury of repose, with the dolce far niente only possible to those in whose veins runs Southern blood. Helwyze leaned in a great chair, which looked a miracle of comfort; but its occupant stirred restlessly, as if he found no ease among its swelling cushions; and there was an alert expression in his face, betraying that the brain was at work on some thought or purpose which both absorbed and excited.
A pause followed the brief dialogue, during which Canaris seemed to relapse into his delicious drowse, while Helwyze sat looking at him with the critical regard one bestows on a fine work of art. Yet something in the spectacle of rest he could not share seemed to annoy him; for, suddenly turning up the shaded lamp upon his table, he dispelled the soft gloom, and broke the silence.
“I have a request to make. May I trouble you to listen?”