contact with this sharper fibre. He felt that it would be good for him to have a man of this sort coming to the house, good for Ada, too, who was beginning to expect admiration from all males.
Arthur and Finch were leaving for the theatre before the others. Mrs. Leigh and Ada were upstairs preparing to put on their evening wraps. While Arthur was ordering a car, the two brothers were left alone in the drawing-room for a moment.
Why, thought Finch, am I cursed by this sense of the unreality of things? There is Renny, sitting in the Leighs' drawing-room, smoking. Here am I, yet I can't believe we are here, that we are real. Is it because nothing seems real outside of Jalna? Are we all like that, or just I? Why do these feelings come over me and spoil my pleasure? He put his thumb to his lips and nervously bit the nail.
Renny turned his head toward him. "Don't bite your nails. It's a beastly habit."
Abashed, Finch stuffed his hand into his pocket.
"Renny," he asked, after a moment, almost plaintively, "does this room seem real to you?"
Renny's brown gaze swept the cream and rose and silver of the room. "No," he said, "I don't think it does."
Thank God, oh, thank God! Things were unreal to Renny, too!
"Well, look here," he went on, anxiously, "do you see it in a tremendous kind of haze, as in a dream, still, yet moving, like a reflection in a bubble?"
Renny stared. "It is something like that."
"And I! Do I seem unreal to you?"
"Decidedly."
He could never have let himself go like this with Renny at home. But it was really wonderful.
"And do you seem unreal to yourself, Renny? Do you wonder why you do certain things? Wonder if you are anything more than a dream?"
"I dare say. I think you're excited to-night. You'd better hang on to yourself or you'll forget your lines."
