"You're not a lazy chap, Dan," he remarked, as if he were deeply considering the verity of that statement. "One wouldn't pick you out as a blasé individual who is tired of everything the world has to offer. You are as filled with energy and nervous force as any chap I ever knew; and you are not yet thirty-five."
"Quite true," I admitted.
"Yet, like a craft that has fought its way through stormy seas around the world, you sit there and try to assure me that you are content to tie up against a rotting wharf, in an odorous slip, and pass the rest of your days in inaction. It isn't like you, Dan."
"It looks very enticing to me just now, however."
"The trouble is," he said, "that your American diplomacy and your amazing politics over here, offer no opportunities to a man of your talents. You should go against the pricks of European intrigue. You ought to butt in, as you fellows express it, upon French statecraft which leaves nothing to be desired in the way of double dealings. You should try Austrian lies, or German brutalities, or Italian and Spanish sophistry, or English stupidity. Believe me, one of these would offer many points of interest which should interest and engage your attention."
"Why not Russian cruelty?" I asked. "That seems to be the only important nationality you have omitted."
"Why not?" he repeated after me.
"You seem to have tired of it yourself, Saberevski."
He shrugged his shoulders, leaning back in his chair, and the suggestion of a shadow passed across his handsome face.
"Dan," he said with an entire change of tone that startled me into renewed interest, "I haven't any doubt that you have always regarded me as a queer sort of chap, more or less shrouded by a mystery you could not fathom. And you were right."