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The jealousy that would once have seemed a blur on her whiteness now appeared like a tribute to ideals in which he no longer believed.... Glennard was little given to exploring the outskirts of literature. He always skipped the "literary notices" in the papers and he had small leisure for the intermittent pleasures of the periodical.
Flamel, who had spoken in the rapid repressed tone of a man on the verge of anger, stared a moment at this and then, in his natural voice, rejoined, good-humoredly, "Upon my soul, I don't understand you!" The change of key seemed to disconcert Glennard. "It's simple enough " he muttered. "Simple enough your offering me money in return for a friendly service?
Glennard, leaning back with his head against the rail and a slit of fugitive blue between his half-closed lids, vaguely wished she wouldn't spoil the afternoon by making people talk; though he reduced his annoyance to the minimum by not listening to what was said, there remained a latent irritation against the general futility of words.
If you got the publishers bidding against each other you might do even better; but of course I'm talking in the dark." "Of course," said Glennard, with sudden dizziness. His hand had slipped from the knob and he stood staring down at the exotic spirals of the Persian rug beneath his feet. "I'd have to see the letters," Flamel repeated.
I'm between the two; there are days when I use them as scenery, other days when I want them as society; so that, as you see, my library represents a makeshift compromise between looks and brains, and the collectors look down on me almost as much as the students." Glennard, without answering, was mechanically taking one book after another from the shelves.
This instinct of protection in the afternoon, on his way uptown, guided him to the club in search of a man who might be persuaded to come out to the country to dine. The only man in the club was Flamel. Glennard, as he heard himself almost involuntarily pressing Flamel to come and dine, felt the full irony of the situation.
Hollingsworth turned on him the crude countenance that looked like the wrong side of a more finished face. "Sorry I can't. I'm in for a beastly banquet." Glennard threw himself into an arm-chair. Why go home in the rain to dress? It was folly to take a cab to the opera, it was worse folly to go there at all.
During the first year of her widowhood their friendship dragged on with halting renewals of sentiment, becoming more and more a banquet of empty dishes from which the covers were never removed; then Glennard went to New York to live and exchanged the faded pleasures of intercourse for the comparative novelty of correspondence.
Flamel's muscles were under control, but his face showed the undefinable change produced by the slow infiltration of poison. Every implication that the words contained had reached its mark; but Glennard felt that their obvious intention was lost in the anguish of what they suggested.
"Then I don't see who's to interfere," said Flamel, studying his cigar-tip. Glennard had turned his unseeing stare on an ecstatic Saint Catherine framed in tarnished gilding. "It's just this way," he began again, with an effort.
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