XXIII“Oh, more or less.” I fancy my smile was pale.“Not absolutely. We shouldn’t like that!” I wenton.
“No—I suppose we shouldn’t. Of course we havethe others.”
“We have the others—we have indeed theothers,” I concurred.
“Yet even though we have them,” hereturned, stillwith his hands in his pockets and planted there in front of me,“they don’t much count, do they?”
I made the best of it, but I felt wan. “It depends on whatyou call ‘much’!”
“Yes”—with allaccommodation—“everything depends!” On this,however, he faced to the window again and presently reached it withhis vague, restless, cogitating step. He remained there awhile,with his forehead against the glass, in contemplation of the stupidshrubs I knew and the dull things of November. I had always myhypocrisy of “work,” behind which,
