Chapter 3 - Page 2

right I wouldn't look at you!" I tenderly
said.

We had both got up, quickened as by this clearer air, and he had
lighted a cigarette. I had taken a fresh one, which with an
intenser smile, by way of answer to my exclamation, he applied to
the flame of his match. "If I weren't better I shouldn't have
thought of THAT!" He flourished his script in his hand.

"I don't want to be discouraging, but that's not true," I returned.
"I'm sure that during the months you lay here in pain you had
visitations sublime. You thought of a thousand things. You think
of more and more all the while. That's what makes you, if you'll
pardon my familiarity, so respectable. At a time when so many
people are spent you come into your second wind. But, thank God,
all the same, you're better! Thank God, too, you're not, as you
were telling me yesterday, 'successful.' If YOU weren't a failure
what would be the use of trying? That's my one reserve on the
subject of your recovery - that it makes you 'score,' as the
newspapers say. It looks well in the newspapers, and almost
anything that does that's horrible. 'We are happy to announce that
Mr. Paraday, the celebrated author, is again in the enjoyment of
excellent health.' Somehow I shouldn't like to see it."

"You won't see it; I'm not in the least celebrated - my obscurity
protects me. But couldn't you bear even to see I was dying or
dead?" my host enquired.

"Dead - passe encore; there's nothing so safe. One never knows
what a living artist may do - one has mourned so many. However,
one must make the worst of it. You must be as dead as you can."

"Don't I meet that condition in having just published a book?"

"Adequately, let us hope; for the book's verily a masterpiece."

At this moment the parlour-maid appeared in the door that opened
from the garden: Paraday lived at no great cost, and the frisk of
petticoats, with a timorous "Sherry, sir?" was about his modest
mahogany. He allowed half his income to his wife, from whom he had
succeeded in separating without redundancy of legend. I had a
general faith in his having behaved well, and I had once, in
London, taken Mrs. Paraday down to dinner. He now turned to speak
to the maid, who offered him, on a tray, some card or note, while,
agitated, excited, I wandered to the end of the precinct. The idea
of his security became supremely dear to me, and I asked myself if
I were the same young man who had come down a few days before to
scatter him to the four winds. When I retraced my steps he had
gone into the house, and the woman - the second London post had
come in - had placed my letters and a newspaper on a bench. I sat
down there to the letters, which were a brief business, and then,
without