THE SACRED FOUNT
He looked at me on this as if I had brought him back to a mere detail, and after an instant the light went out of his face. "So it is. I leave it to you. I don't care." His drop had the usual suddenness of the drops of the artistic temperament. "Look for the last man," he nevertheless, but with more detachment, added. "I daresay it would be he."
"The last? In what sense the last?"
"Well, the last sort of creature who could be believed of her."
"Oh," I rejoined as we went on, "the great bar to that is that such a sort of creature as the last won't be here!"
He hesitated. "So much the better. I give him, at any rate, wherever he is, up to you."
"Thank you," I returned, "for the beauty of the present! You do see, then, that our psychologic glow doesn't, after all, prevent the thing———"
"From being none of one's business? Yes. Poor little woman!" He seemed somehow satisfied; he threw it all up. "It isn't any of one's business, is it?"
"Why, that's what I was telling you," I impatiently exclaimed, "that I feel!"
69
