"I!" began Stone Wall Strong. "Why, you know I think he's a first rate fellow, if only——"
This time, however, Amory really did intend to get it out of him. For once she would have one of those hung-up sentences completed.
"If only what?" she said, looking up at him.
"Oh, I don't know—as you said a moment ago, there's no 'why' about these things——"
"But I did give you my impression. You don't give me yours."
"You did, I admit. Yes, I admit you did.... What is it you want to know, then?"
"Only why you seem so doubtful about Mr. Prang."
"Ah!" said Mr. Strong....
Those who knew Edgar Strong the best said that he was a man who, other things being equal, would rather go straight than not. Even when the other things were not quite equal, he still had a mild preference for straightness. But if other people positively insisted that he should deviate from straightness, very well; that was their look-out. He had been a good many things in his time—solicitor's clerk, free-lance journalist, book-pedlar, election-agent's minion, Vanner, poetic vagabond, and always an unerring "spotter" of the literary son of the farming squire the moment he appeared in sight; and the "Novum" was the softest job he had found yet. If the price of his keeping it was that he should look its owner's wife long and earnestly in the eyes, as if in his own there lay immeasurable things, not for him to give but for her to take if she list, so be it; he would sleep none the less well in his rent-free bedroom behind the "Novum's" offices afterwards. His experience of far less comfortable sleeping-quarters had persuaded him that in this imperfect world a man is entitled to exactly what he can get.
His eyes, nevertheless, did not seek Amory's. Instead, roving round the room to see if nothing less would serve (leaving him still with the fathomless look in reserve for emergencies), they fell on the Benares tray and the casts. And as they remained there he suddenly frowned. Amory's own eyes followed his; and suddenly she felt again that little creeping thrill. A faint colour and warmth, new and pleasurable, came into her cheeks.