"I can't say. I doubt if he was ever young—like you. But I knew him when he was a boy."
"So you understand him?"
"Oh, pretty well. Not always, perhaps. He's a difficult subject."
"Anyhow, you like him? Don't you?"
Stanistreet gave a curious hard laugh.
"Oh yes—I like him."
"That's all right. And really, I don't wonder that people can't make him out. He's the strangest animal I ever met in my life. I haven't made him out yet. I think I shall give him up."
"Give him up, by all means. Isn't that what people generally do when they can't understand each other?"
Mrs. Nevill Tyson made no answer. She was trying to think, and thinking came hard to Mrs. Nevill Tyson.
"I suppose he's had a past. But of course it doesn't do to go poking and probing into a man's past—"