you would make guilty before the day comes—you, I say, who find life at a stage-door!"
He pointed threateningly with his finger across the table, and I knew that he spoke the truth. I could find no answer to his accusation, so I drank deeply of the wine and avoided the search of his eyes. But I continued to feel his look; almost the terrible grasp of his hand upon mine. There was silence for some minutes before he spoke again, and then it was with another voice, as though one had put ice upon his tongue.
"One fool often makes two," he said, as he called for a second bottle of wine. " Forget that I have spoken, for I am but the servant of the Master, and how shall the servant speak when the Master has not spoken? I brought you here for your ends, not for mine, and therefore would serve your ends before my own. You are Roderick Connoley, a barrister, with little money and with less employment; your life, for what it is worth, is a dream mostly dreamed in tobacco-smoke; and what you lack in performance at the moment you find in promise for the future. As a so-called man about town, you are condescending enough to patronize the vices, for which you care little, but in the true pleasures of living you remain a child. In this respect you are as other men, for how many of the thousands who drift on the sea of enjoyment in this city know any thing of those treasures which Life can give to him who understands her? I have watched you as I have
