"Good to believe in--no good otherwise. Let it alone and it's the finest thing in the world; use it, and you will have to find another name for it."
"Friendship must remain always the happiest and most comforting of all--theories," he said. "Let it alone; it has a value inestimable in its own place--no value otherwise."
"Your notion concerning friends and friendship isn't the popular one."
"But my friends will sleep the sounder for knowing what are my views concerning friendship."
"That's cynical and unfair," began the other, reddening.
"No, it's honest; and you notice that even my honesty puts a certain strain on our friendship," retorted Edgerton, still laughing.
"You're only partly in earnest, aren't you?"
"Oh, I'm never really in earnest about anything. That's why Fate extended an unerring and iron hand, grasped me by the slack of my pants, shook me until all my pockets turned inside out, and set me down hard on the trolley tracks of Destiny. Just now I'm crawling for the sidewalk and the skirts of Chance."
He laughed again without the slightest bitterness, and looked out of the window.
The view from the club window was soothing: Fifth Avenue lay silent and deserted in the sunshine of an early summer morning.
Inwood said: "The papers--everybody--spoke most glowingly of the way your firm settled with its creditors."
"Oh, hell! Why should ordinary honesty make such a stir in New York? Don't let's talk about it; I'm going home, anyway."
"It's been locked up for over a year, hasn't it?"
"Come down to Oyster Bay with me," urged Inwood; "come on, Jim, and forget your troubles over Sunday."
"As for my troubles," returned the other, rising with a shrug and pulling on his gloves, "I've had leisure on the ocean to classify and pigeonhole the lot of them. I know exactly what I'm going to do, and I'm going home to begin it."
"Begin what?" inquired Inwood with a curiosity entirely friendly.
"I'm going to find out," said Edgerton, "whether any of what my friends have called my 'talents' are real enough to get me a job worth three meals a day, or whether they'll merely procure for me the hook."
"I don't know exactly. I thought of turning some one of my parlor tricks into a future profession--if people will let me."