Excerpt
CHAPTER I A PROPHECY
“You’re cold-blooded as a fish, Roberts, colder. You’re—There is no adequate simile.”
The man addressed said nothing.
“You degrade every consideration in life, emotional and other, to a dollar-and-cents basis. Sentiment, ambition, common judgment of right and wrong, all gravitate to the same level. You have a single standard of measurement that you apply to all alike, which alike condemns or justifies. Summer and Winter, morning, noon, and night—it’s the same. Your little yardstick is always in evidence, measuring, measuring—You, confound you, drive me to distraction with your eternal ‘does it pay.’”
Still the other man said nothing.
“I know,” apologetically, “I’m rubbing it in pretty hard, Darley, but I can’t help it. You exasperate me beyond my boiling point at times and I simply can’t avoid bubbling over. I believe if by any possibility you were ever to have a romance in your life, and it came on slowly enough so you could analyze a bit in advance, you’d still get out your tape line and tally up to the old mark: would it pay!”
This time the other smiled, a smile of tolerant amusement.
“And why shouldn’t I? Being merely the fish you suggest, it seems to me that that’s the one time in a human being’s life when, more than another, deliberation is in order. The wider the creek the longer the wise man will linger on the margin to estimate the temperature of the current in event of failure to reach the opposite bank. Inadvertently, Armstrong, you pass me a compliment. Merely as an observer, marriage looks to me like the longest leap a sane man will ever attempt.”
“I expected you’d say that,” shortly,—“predicted it.”
“You give me credit for being consistent, then, at least.”
“Yes, you’re consistent all right.”
“Thanks. That’s the first kind word I’ve heard in a long time.”
The other made a wry face.
“Don’t thank me,” he excepted. “I’m not at all sure I meant the admission to be complimentary; in fact I hardly think I did. I was hoping for once I’d find you napping, without your measuring stick. In other words—find you—human.”
“And now you’re convinced the case is hopeless?”
“Convinced, yes, if I thought you were serious.”
Roberts laughed, a big-chested, tolerant laugh.
“Seems to me you ought to realize by this time that I am serious, Armstrong. You’ve known me long enough. Do you still fancy I’ve been posing these last five years you’ve known me?”
“No; you never pose, Darley. This is a compliment, I think; moreover, it’s the reason most of all why I like you.” He laughed in turn, unconsciously removing the sting from the observation following. “I can’t see any other possible excuse for our being friends. We’re as different as night is from day.”
The criticism was not new, and Roberts said nothing.
“I wonder now and then, at times like this,” remarked Armstrong, “how long we will stick together. It’s been five years, as you say....