. A d----d
jackass! Hardly Hegelian, but neat, Roger, and most beautifully
appropriate. A jackass, I am. Also as you have remarked, an idiot. You
see, there's no argument. I admit the soft impeachment. But I won't
drink again just now; so set the brandy bottle down like a good
fellow and we will talk as one gentleman to another."

I saw that I had brought him for the moment to his senses, and obeyed,
sitting resolutely silent with folded arms, waiting for him to go on.
He took a pipe from his pocket rather sheepishly, then filled and
lighted it.

"You _are_ a good sort, Roger," he said at last, with an embarrassment
that contrasted strangely with the bombast of a moment ago. "I--I'm
glad you did that. I think you're about the only person in the world
I'd have taken it from. But I haven't drunk much. I couldn't get to be
much of a drunkard in three weeks, could I?" He smiled his boyish
smile and disarmed me.

"But why drink at all?" I asked quietly.

"Oh, I don't know. It's such an easy way to be jolly. Everybody does
it. You can't seem to go anywhere without somebody sticking a glass
under your nose. It's part of the social formula. There's no harm in
it, in reason."

"Jerry," I said sternly. "You've begun wrong. I don't know whether
it's my fault or not, but you seem to be hopelessly twisted in your
view of life. You're floundering. Of course it's none of my business.
I've done what I was paid to do, and you've got to work things out in
your own way. If you want to drink yourself maudlin, that's your
privilege. I can move out, but while I'm here in this house I'm not
going to sit idly by while you make a fool of yourself."

He puffed on his pipe a moment in silence, eyeing the table leg.

"I _am_ a fool," he said soberly at last. And then after a pause, "I
don't know what the trouble has been exactly, unless I've taken
people too literally; and that's your fault, Roger. White with you was
always white and black was black. You taught me to say what I thought
and to believe that other people said what they thought. That was a
mistake."

"You forget," I said, "that I wasn't brought here to teach you
worldliness. But you can't say that I didn't warn you against it."

He had gotten up and now paced the room with long strides.

"Futile, Roger! Absolutely futile. In my heart even then, I think, I
believed you narrow. You see, I'm frank. A few months in the world
hasn't changed my opinion. But I do want to think s