Lord Theign had been reached by his
friend's mute pressure. "'Something'?"

"Something, Mr. Bender?" Lord John insisted.

It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. "Why, have _you_ an
interest, Lord John?"

This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was,
referred it to Lord Theign. "Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as
if I have an interest?"

Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and
then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. "My dear fellow,
you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!"

"Oh, I don't mean at your expense," Lord John laughed--"I mean at Mr.
Bender's!"

"Well, go ahead, Lord John," said that gentleman, always easy, but
always too, as you would have felt, aware of everything--"go ahead, but
don't sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn't already exist
in the germ. The attempt has often been made, over here--has in fact
been organised on a considerable scale; but I guess I've got some
peculiarity, for it doesn't seem as if the thing could be done. If the
germ is there, on the other hand," Mr. Bender conceded, "it develops
independently of all encouragement."

Lord John communicated again as in a particular sense with Lord Theign.
"He thinks I really mean to _offer_ him something!"

Lord Theign, who seemed to wish to advertise a degree of detachment from
the issue, or from any other such, strolled off, in his restlessness,
toward the door that opened to the terrace, only stopping on his way
to light a cigarette from a matchbox on a small table. It was but after
doing so that he made the remark: "Ah, Mr. Bender may easily be too much
for you!"

"That makes me the more sorry, sir," said his visitor, "not to have been
enough for _you!_"

"I risk it, at any rate," Lord John went on--"I put you, Bender, the
question of whether you wouldn't Move,' as you say, to acquire that
Moretto."

Mr. Bender's large face had a commensurate gaze. "As I say? I haven't
said anything of the sort!"

"But you do 'love' you know," Lord John slightly overgrimaced.

"I don't when I don't want to. I'm different from most people--I can
love or not as I like. The trouble with that Moretto," Mr. Bender
continued, "is that it ain't what I'm after."

His "after" had somehow, for the ear, the vividness of a sharp whack
on the resisting surface of things, and was concerned doubtless in Lord
John's speaking again across to their host. "Th