"Honest as you like, if you'll only come to the point. Whew, but it's hot! Let's have a gin-fizz."
"You aren't serious."
Havelock seemed to try to lash himself into a rage. But he was so big that he could never have got all of himself into a rage at once. You felt that only part of him was angry—his toes, perhaps, or his complexion.
Chantry rang for ice and lemon, and took gin, sugar, and a siphon out of a carved cabinet.
"Go slow," he said. He himself was going very slow, with a beautiful crystal decanter which he set lovingly on the oaken table. "Go slow," he repeated, more easily, when he had set it down. "I can think just as well with a gin-fizz as without one. And I didn't know Ferguson well; and I didn't like him at all. I read his books, and I admired him. But he looked like the devil—the devil, you'll notice, not a devil. With a dash of Charles I by Van Dyck. The one standing by a horse. As you say, he cocked his hair. It went into little horns, above each eyebrow. I'm sorry he's lost to the world, but it doesn't get me. He may have been a saint, for all I know; but there you are—I never cared particularly to know. I am serious. Only, somehow, it doesn't touch me."
And he proceeded to make use of crushed ice and lemon juice.
"Oh, blow all that," said Havelock the Dane finally, over the top of his glass. "I'm going to tell you, anyhow. Only I wish you would forget your prejudices. I want an opinion."
"Go on."
Chantry made himself comfortable.