“Honest?”
“Quite honest.”
“You know a man like myself shouldn’t fool himself,” he said, staring into the fire. “To-day’s a good day. But I do seem to be picking up. You know, I would like to live. I don’t mind going, not at all. But—it’s such an interesting world, I’d like to see what’s going to happen, and—after.”
He moved his hand in a feeble gesture, and the shadow it made crept across the sunlight that flooded the room.
“It’s interesting when you’ve got to an impersonal point of view and you can stand and just look on. Youth is a sort of disease. I’ve lived through that fever, groped beyond my limitations, struggled with nightmares. It left some marks on me—not many. Funny, I feel just ready to begin life, now.”
“I wish to God I could look at it that way,” I said impulsively.
“What way, Davy?” he said, a little puzzled, and by that I knew that he had been talking, not to me, but to some shadowy self.
“Looking at things from the impersonal way.”
I was making a pretense of emptying my pipe, and turning, I faced his sharp eyes.