in my life when I saved yours. Quite apart from brotherly love, I make a guess that you're the flower of the flock. I'm damned if I know why I think so. I suppose it's intuition—I being a poet, and sensitive along with those other attributes ascribed to me by Renny. God, isn't he an amusing fellow?"
"He's splendid!" said Finch, hotly. "I don't want to hear anything against him."
"You won't. Not from me. I admire him as much as you do—though in a different way. I admire and envy the side of him that you don't know at all. . . . Tell me, Finch, what are you going to do with your life? Do you mind talking to me? Are we friends?"
"Rather! I hope I have gratitude"
"Stop! Don't say that word. It's a vile word. Not one pleasant word will rhyme with it. Try! See what you'll get. Prude—dude—spewed—lewd"
Finch added heavily: "There's nude, too."
"Preposterous! It's an unholy company." He looked into the brightness of the stream in silence for a little, then said, with sudden gravity: "Why on earth should you be grateful to me? I want your friendship. Have I got it?"
"Yes. . . . I mean I like you, Eden, but it will be strange being friends with you. Something quite new."
"But you'll try? Good. Have a cigarette." He offered a silver case filled with an expensive brand. Finch recalled the figure on the bench in Madison Square Gardens—shabby, despairing, ill. How thoroughly Eden had recovered, acquired a look of well-being! If he himself had been in such a plight, he doubted whether he could have recovered, and here was Eden, amused, contemptuous of sentiment, ready for another fling at life.
He accepted the cigarette and a light.
Eden said: "I believe we are more alike than you'd ever guess. I think we both got a good deal from our—what was it Gran called her?—our 'poor flibbertigibbet mother.'"
"Don't!" interrupted Finch harshly.
