"If I do not you will curse me to-day," Muller said, with a drawl; "and if I do, you may curse me more bitterly eighteen months hence. So it seems to me it is a choice between two evils."
"There you are mistaken," Sterne replied. "I certainly shall curse you if you refuse me, but if you become my friend to-day I shall never cease to bless you."
"Not if you fail?"
"Why will you persist in harping on that one string? I shall not fail. Failure is out of the reckoning. I am as certain of success as I am of my own existence."
"'Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.'"
"Please, Muller, don't quote the Bible to me."
"It is sound philosophy wherever it is taken from. Besides, the Bible is good literature."
"So is Dante's 'Inferno.' But if you were dosed with it morning, noon and night, for the space of fifteen or twenty years, you would be glad to have a little respite. But we are getting away again from the subject in hand. Let's stick to the one point till we've done with it. If you've made up your mind that you won't help me, say so."
"My dear fellow, all that I've been anxious to do is to enable you, if possible, to realise all that such a contract implies."
"Well, if I didn't realise it before, I do now. You've been very faithful."