THE SACRED FOUNT
pects gave something of a flare. I said to myself that since your interest hadn't then wholly dropped, why, even at the worst, should mine? Yours was mine, wasn't it? for a little, this morning. Or was it mine that was yours? We exchanged, at any rate, some lively impressions. Only, before we had done, your effort dropped or your discretion intervened: you gave up, as none of your business, the question that had suddenly tempted us."
"And you gave it up too," said my friend.
"Yes, and it was on the idea that it was mine as little as yours that we separated."
"Well then?" He kept his eyes, with his head thrown back, on the warm bindings, admirable for old gilt and old colour, that covered the opposite wall.
"Well then, if I've correctly gathered that you're, in spite of our common renunciation, still interested, I confess to you that I am. I took my detachment too soon for granted. I haven't been detached. I'm not, hang me! detached now. And it's all because you were originally so suggestive."
"Originally?"
"Why, from the moment we met here yesterday—the moment of my first seeing you with Mrs. Server. The look you gave me then was really the beginning of everything. Everything"—and I spoke now with real conviction—"was traceably to spring from it."
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