e young and a stranger, alone like me;
you stirred no memories of a past that now, in my age, I would forget;
your face was the face of honor and truth. I thought: What a blessing if
I could make a friend of this young man for the little while that is
left me!... And you have been a blessing and a joy--more than you can
dream. And now you will not cast me off, like the others.... I do not
know the words with which to try to thank you...."

"Oh, don't," came Queed's voice hastily out of the dark. "There is no
question of thanks here."

He got up, lit the lamps, pulled down the shade. The old man lay back in
his chair, his hands gripping its arms, the lamplight full upon him.
Never had Queed seen him look less inspiring to affection. His black cap
had gotten pushed to one side, which both revealed a considerable area
of hairless head, and imparted to the whole face an odd and rakish air;
the Italian eyes did not wholly match with the softness of his voice;
the thin-lipped mouth under the long auburn mustache looked neither
sorrowful nor kind. It was Queed's lifelong habit never to look back
with vain regrets; and he needed all of his resolution now.

He stood in front of the man whose terrible secret he had surprised, and
outwardly he was as calm as ever.

"Professor Nicolovius," he said, with a faint emphasis upon the name,
"all this is as though it had never passed between us. And now let's go
and get some supper."

Surface rose to his height and took Queed's hand in a grip like iron.
His eyes glistened with sudden moisture.

"God bless you, boy! You're a _man!_"

* * * * *

It had been a memorable conversation in the life of both men, opening up
obvious after-lines of more or less momentous thought. Yet each of them,
as it happened, neglected these lines for a corollary detail of
apparently much less seriousness, and pretty nearly the same detail at
that. For Surface sat long that evening, meditating how he might most
surely break up the friendship between his young friend and Sharlee
Weyland; while Queed, all during his busy hours at the office, found his
thoughts of Nicolovius dominated by speculations as to what Miss Weyland
would say, if she knew that he had formed a lifelong compact with the
man who had betrayed her father's friendship and looted her own fortune.

XXIII

_Of the Bill for the Reformatory, and its Critical Situation; of
West's Second Disappo