"You didn't suppose I hadn't changed, did you?" Then he leaned suddenly forward. "This is rather a mistake, Romarin—rather a mistake," he said.
"What is?"
"This—our meeting again. Quite a mistake."
Romarin sighed. "I had hoped not," he said.
Marsden leaned forward again, with another gesture Romarin remembered very well—dinner knife in hand, edge and palm upwards, punctuating and expounding with the point.
"I tell you, it's a mistake," he said, knife and hand balanced. "You can't reopen things like this. You don't really want to reopen them; you only want to reopen certain of them; you want to pick and choose among things, to approve and disapprove. There must have been somewhere or other something in me you didn't altogether dislike—I can't for the life of me think what it was, by the way; and you want to lay stress on that and to sink the rest. Well, you can't. I won't let you. I'll not submit my life to you like that. If you want to go into things, all right; but it must be all or none. And I'd like another drink."
He put the knife down with a little clap as Romarin beckoned to the waiter.
There was distress on Romarin's face. He was not conscious of having adopted a superior attitude. But again he told himself that he must make allowances. Men who don't come off in Life's struggle are apt to be touchy, and he was; after all, the same old Marsden, the man with whom he desired to be at peace.
"Are you quite fair to me?" he asked presently, in a low voice.
Again the knife was taken up and its point advanced.