I gave up by going, decidedly, to the smoking-room, where several men
had gathered and where Obert, a little apart from them, was in charmed
communion with the bookshelves. They are wonderful, everywhere, at
Newmarch, the bookshelves, but he put a volume back as he saw me come
in, and a moment later, when we were seated, I said to him again, as a
recall of our previous passage, "Then you _could_ tell what I was
talking about!" And I added, to complete my reference, "Since you
thought Mrs. Server was the person whom, when I stopped you, I was sorry
to learn from you I had missed."
His momentary silence appeared to admit the connection I established.
"Then you find you _have_ missed her? She wasn't there for you?"
"There's no one 'there for me'; so that I fear that if you weren't, as
it happens, here for me, my amusement would be quite at an end. I had,
in fact," I continued, "already given it up as lost when I came upon
you, a while since, in conversation with the lady we've named. At that,
I confess, my prospects 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."
"What do you mean," he asked, "by everything?"
"Well, this failure of detachment. What you said to me as we were going
up yesterday afternoon to dress--what you said to me then is responsible
for it. And since it comes to that," I pursued, "I make out for myself
now that you're not detached either--unless, that is, simply detached
from _me_. I had indeed a suspicion of that as I passed through the room
there."
He smoked through another pause. "You've extraordinary notions of
responsibility."
I watched him a moment, but he only stared at the books without looking
round. Something in his voice had made me more certain, and my certainty
made me laugh. "I see you _are_ serious!"
But he went on quietly enough. "You've extraordinary notions of
responsibility. I deny altogether mine."
"You _are_ serious--you _are_!" I repeated with a gaiety that I meant as
inoffensive and that I believe remained so. "But no matter. You're no
worse than I."
"I'm clearly, by your own story, not half so bad. But, as you say, no
matter. I don't care."