"Be as friendly as I am, Marsden," he said. "I think--pardon me--that if
our positions were reversed, and I saw in you the sincere desire to help
that I have, I'd take it in the right way." Again Marsden looked
suspiciously at him. "To help? How to help?" he demanded "That's what I
should like you to tell me. But I suppose (for example) you still work?" "Oh, my work!" Marsden made a little gesture of contempt. "Try again,
Romarin." "You don't do any?... Come, I'm no bad friend to my friends, and you'll
find me--especially so." But Marsden put up his hand. "Not quite so quickly," he said. "Let's see what you mean by help first. Do you really mean that you want me to borrow money from you? That's help
as I understand it nowadays." "Then you've changed," said Romarin--wondering, however, in his secret
heart whether Marsden had changed very much in that respect after all. Marsden gave a short honk of a laugh. "You didn't suppose I hadn't changed, did you?" Then he leaned suddenly
forward. "This is rather a mistake, Romarin--rather a mistake," he said. "What is?" "This--our meeting again. Quite a mistake." Romarin sighed. "I had hoped not," he said. Marsden leaned forward again, with another gesture Romarin remembered
very well--dinner knife in hand, edge and palm upwards, punctuating
and expounding with the point. "I tell you, it's a mistake," he said, knife and hand balanced. "You
can't reopen things like this. You don't really _want_ to reopen them;
you only want to reopen certain of them; you want to pick and choose
among things, to approve and disapprove. There must have been somewhere
or other something in me you didn't altogether dislike--I can't for the
life of me think what it was, by the way; and you want to lay stress on
that and to sink the rest. Well, you can't. I won't let you. I'll not
submit my life to you like that. If you want to go into things, all
right; but it must be all or none. And I'd like another drink." He put the knife down with a little clap as Romarin beckoned to the
waiter. There was distress on Romarin's face. He was not conscious of having
adopted a superior attitude. But again he told himself that he must make
allowances. Men who don't come off in Life's struggle are apt to be
touchy, and he was; after all, the same old Marsden, the man with whom he
desired to be at peace. "Are you quite fair to me?" he asked presently, in a low voice. Again the knife was taken up and its point advanced. "Yes, I am," said Marsden in a slightly raised voice; and he indicated
with the knife the mirror at the end of the table. "You know you've done
well, and I, to all appearances, haven't; you can't look at that glass
and not know it. But I've followed the line of my development too, no
less logically than you. My life's been mine, and I'm not going to
apologise for it to a single breathing creature. More, I'm proud of it. At least, there's been singleness of intention about it. So I think I'm
strictly fair in pointing that out when you talk about helping me." "Perhaps so, perhaps so," Romarin agreed a little sadly. "It's your tone
more than anything else that makes things a little difficult. Believe me,
I've no end in my mind except pure friendliness." "No-o-o," said Marsden--a long "no" that seemed to deliberate, to
examine, and finally to admit. "No. I believe that. And you usually get
what you set out for. Oh yes. I've watched your rise--I've made a point
of watching it. It's been a bit at a time, but you've got there. You're
that sort. It's on your forehead--your destiny." Romarin smiled. "Hallo, that's new, isn't it?" he said. "It wasn't your habit to talk
much about destiny, if I remember rightly. Let me see; wasn't this more
your style--'will, passion, laughs-at-impossibilities and says,' et
cetera--and so forth? Wasn't that it? With always the suspicion not far
away that you did things more from theoretical conviction than real
impulse after all?" A dispassionate observer would have judged that the words went somewhere
near home. Marsden was scraping together with the edge of his knife the
crumbs of his broken roll. He scraped them into a little square, and then
trimmed the corners. Not until the little pile was shaped to his liking
did he look surlily up. "Let it rest, Romarin," he said curtly. "Drop it," he added. "Let it
alone. If I begin to talk like that, too, we shall only cut one another
up. Clink glasses--there--and let it alone." Mechanically Romarin clinked; but his bald brow was perplexed. "'Cut one another up?'" he repeated. "Yes. Let it alone." "'Cut one another up?'" he repeated once more. "You puzzle me entirely." "Well, perhaps I'm altogether wrong. I only wanted to warn you that I've
dared a good many things in my time. Now drop it." Romarin had fine brown eyes, under Oriental arched brows. Again they
noted the singularly vicious look of the man opposite. They were full
of mistrust and curiosity, and he stroked his silver beard. "Drop it?" he said slowly ... "No, let's go on. I want to hear more of
this." "I'd much rather have another drink in peace and quietness.... Waiter!" Either leaned back in his chair, surveying the other. "You're a perverse
devil still," was Romarin's thought. Marsden's, apparently, was of
nothing but the whiskey and soda the waiter had gone to fetch. *       *       *       *       *

Romarin was inclined to look askance at a man who could follow up a gin
and bitters with three or four whiskeys and soda without turning a hair. It argued the seasoned cask. Marsden had bidden the waiter leave the
bottle and the syphon on the table, and was already mixing himself
another stiff peg. "Well," he said, "since you will have it so--to the old days." "To the old days," said Romarin, watching him gulp it down. "Queer, looking back across all that time at 'em, isn't it? How do you
feel about it?" "In a mixed kind of way, I think; the usual thing: pleasure and regret
mingled." "Oh, you have regrets, have you?" "For certain things, yes. Not, let me say, my turn-up with you, Marsden,"
he laughed. "That's why I chose the old place--" he gave a glance
round at its glittering newness. "Do you happen to remember what all that
was about? I've only the vaguest idea." Marsden gave him a long look. "That all?" he asked. "Oh, I remember in a sort of way. That 'Romantic' soap-bubble of yours
was really at the bottom of it, I suspect. Tell me," he smiled, "did you
really suppose Life could be lived on those mad lines you used to lay
down?" "My life," said Marsden calmly, "has been." "Not literally." "Literally." "You mean to say that you haven't outgrown _that_?" "I hope not." Romarin had thrown up his handsome head. "Well, well!" he murmured
incredulously. "Why 'well, well'?" Marsden demanded.... "But, of course, you never did
and never will know what I meant." "By Romance? ... No, I can't say that I did; but as I conceived it, it
was something that began in appetite and ended in diabetes." "Not philosophic, eh?"