"Well, that's something to believe."
The elder Pittsey had called upon the younger on the previous evening, having obtained the address—so he explained—from the "folks at home"; and he had been introduced to Don by his proud brother, who carried himself with a subdued and respectful admiration for Walter, and was impressed by the easy friendliness of manner which developed at once between Walter and Don. He even dropped the note of raillery in his relations with Don, when the succeeding days seemed to strengthen that friendliness; and if he was somewhat envious of the way in which Don was admitted to confidences from which he himself was excluded, he consoled himself by falling back on Conroy for company, and left his brother to his choice.
It followed that Don was free to walk and argue with his new friend as much as he wished; and Walter Pittsey was nothing if not a patient listener. The discussions were rather one-sided, and they were always of abstract questions—for Don was still incapable of talking of himself—but they were the aggressive arguments of an idealist who was beginning to find his voice; and they marked a stage in Don's development from his past to his future.
They were, of course, merely the attempts of a bewildered youth to find some working compromise, on which to live, between the barren scepticisms of his education and the instincts which that education could not kill. He was at that most violent period of a man's growth, when the crisis of all his fevers come on him together, when he is tormented by the passionate uncertainties of his love and the chilling uncertainties of
