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Dane laid his hand on his companion’s arm.”It’s charming how when we speak for ourselves we speak for each other. That was exactly what I said!” He had fallen to recalling from over the gulf the last occasion.

The Brother, as if it would do them both good, only desired to draw him out.”What you ‘said’–?”

“To him –that morning.” Dane caught a far bell again and heard a slow footstep. A quiet presence passed somewhere–neither of them turned to look. What was little by little more present to him was the perfect taste. It was supreme–it was everywhere.”I just dropped my burden–and he received it.”

“And was it very great?”

“Oh such a load!” Dane said with gaiety.

“Trouble, sorrow, doubt?”

“Oh no–worse than that!”

“Worse?”

” ‘ Success’–the vulgarest kind!” He mentioned it now as with amusement.

“Ah I know that too! No one in future, as things are going, will be able to face success.”

“Without something of this sort–never. The better it is the worse–the greater the deadlier. But my one pain here,” Dane continued, “is in thinking of my poor friend.”

“The person to whom you’ve already alluded?”

He tenderly assented.”My substitute in the world. Such an unutterable benefactor. He turned up that morning when everything had somehow got on my nerves, when the whole great globe indeed, nerves or no nerves, seemed to have appallingly squeezed itself into my study and to be bent on simply swelling there. It wasn’t a question of nerves, it was a mere question of the dislodgement and derangement of everything–of a general submersion by our eternal too much. I didn’t know ou donner de la tete –I couldn’t have gone a step further.”

The intelligence with which the Brother listened kept them as children feeding from the same bowl.”And then you got the tip?”

“I got the tip!” Dane happily sighed.

“Well, we all get it. But I dare say differently.”

“Then how did you –?”

The Brother hesitated, smiling.”You tell me first.”

III

“Well,” said George Dane, “it was a young man I had never seen–a man at any rate much younger than myself–who had written to me and sent me some article, some book. I read the stuff, was much struck with it, told him so and thanked him–on which of course I heard from him again. Ah that –!” Dane comically sighed.”He asked me things–his questions were interesting; but to save time and writing I said to him: ‘Come to see me–we can talk a little; but all I can give you is half an hour at breakfast.’ He arrived to the minute on a day when more than ever in my life before I seemed, as it happened, in the endless press and stress, to have lost possession of my soul and to be surrounded only with the affairs of other people, smothered in mere irrelevant importunity. It made me literally ill–made me feel as I had never felt that should I once really for an hour lose hold of the thing itself, the thing that did matter and that I was trying for, I should never recover it again. The wild waters would close over me and I should drop straight to the dark depths where the vanquished dead lie.”

“I follow you every step of your way,” said the friendly Brother.”The wild waters, you mean, of our horrible time.”

“Of our horrible time precisely. Not of course–as we sometimes dream–of any other.”

“Yes, any other’s only a dream. We really know none but our own.”

“No, thank God–that’s enough,” Dane contentedly smiled.”Well, my young man turned up, and I hadn’t been a minute in his presence before making out that practically it would be in him somehow or other to help me. He came to me with envy, envy extravagant–really passionate. I was, heaven save us, the great ‘success’ for him; he himself was starved and broken and beaten. How can I say what passed between us?–it was so strange, so swift, so much a matter, from one to the other, of instant perception and agreement. He was so clever and haggard and hungry!”