“You know he has just enough stupidity to make an intelligent professor of Swedish drill.”
“And Darby Lunn?”
“Lunn has talent, David. Whether he will ever amount to a thing as a painter is another thing. I doubt it. He is a bit mad, you know. Nurtures all the nonsense of his will with a great pride instead of trampling it under, as a true artist should. What I am trying to help him toward is knowledge of the folly of extravagance and wildness in so sober a calling as Art.”
“But you are wild with him, Tom. You talk nonsense and you act nonsense as I have never seen you do with any one else!”
“If I didn’t meet him on his own ground, what chance would I have of drawing him off it?... Really, Davie, you are a joke.”
“Are you very fond of him also?”
“Not also—and not either. I am interested in Darby’s hopeless talent: and in Durthal’s efficient helplessness.”
“They both believe, I am sure, that you’re devoted to them.”
“Well: they are devoted to me. Why should I not let them think what gives them pleasure? Do I harm them—does what I let them think harm you?" ... David often wondered if each believed himself Tom’s “only friend.”
But now he knew these doubts unworthy. He had a strength with which to exorcize them. He knew that he was the real friend. He knew that Tom was not altogether conscious of his motives with such “friends” as Lunn and Durthal. The truth was, he loved power: loved the nearness of those over whose minds he was ascendant. Unconsciously, he fed to each a subjecting mental and emotional food. This was but one of the details of Tom’s curious character; David now understood.