is smile. Rickman was about to go; but
he detained him.

"Wait one minute. Do you mind telling me whether you've any regular
sources of income besides _Metropolis_?"

"Well, not at the moment."

"And supposing--none arise?"

"I must risk it."

"You seem to have a positive mania for taking risks." Yes, that was
Rickman all over, he found a brilliant joy in the excitement; he was
in love with danger.

"Oh well, sometimes, you know, you've _got_ to take them."

Happy Rickman! The things that were so difficult and complicated to
Jewdwine were so simple, so incontestable to him. "Some people,
Rickman, would say you were a fool." He sighed, and the sigh was a
tribute his envy paid to Rickman's foolishness. "I won't offer an
opinion; the event will prove."

"It won't prove anything. Events never do. They merely happen."

"Well, if they happen wrong, and I can help you, you've only got to
come to me."

Never in all his life had Jewdwine so nearly achieved the grace of
humility as in this offer of his help. He would have given anything if
Rickman could have accepted it, but refusal was a foregone conclusion.
And yet he offered it.

"Thanks--thanks awfully." It was Rickman who appeared nervous and
ashamed. His mouth twitched; he held out his hand abruptly; he was
desperately anxious to say good-night and get it over. It seemed to
him that he had been six years taking leave of Jewdwine; each year had
seen the departure of some quality he had known him by. He wanted to
have done with it now for ever.

But Jewdwine would not see his hand. He turned away; paced the floor;
swung back on a hesitating heel and approached him, smiling.

"You're not going to disappear altogether, are you? You'll turn up
again, and let me know how you're getting on?"

To Rickman there was something tragic and retrospective in Jewdwine's
smile. It had no joy in it, but an appeal, rather, to the memory of
what he had been. He found it irresistible.

"Thanks. I shall get on all right; but I'll turn up again sometime."

Jewdwine's smile parted with its pathos, its appeal. It conveyed a
promise, an assurance that whatever else had perished in him his
friendship was not dead.

For there were ways, apart from the ways of journalism, in which
Jewdwine could be noble still. And still, as he watched Rickman's
departing back, the back that he seemed doomed to know so well, he
said to himself--

"He's magnificent, but I can't afford him."