So John Delancy Curtis drew a deep breath that sounded almost like a
sigh, but a pleasant smile illumined his somewhat stern face as he
turned to Devar and said:
"I am giving myself fourteen days' free run of the town before I go
West to visit some relatives. They live in Indiana, I believe.
Bloomington, Monroe County, is the latest address I possess. Don't
forget to ring me up to-morrow. You remember the hotel, the Central,
in West 27th Street."
"Oh, forget it!" cried the other vexedly. "Why in the world are you
burying yourself in that pre-historic shanty? Man alive, the Holland
House is only a block away, and there are 'steen hotels of the right
sort strung out along Fifth Avenue, 'way up to Central Park----"
"It's just a whim," broke in Curtis, who did not feel like explaining
at the moment that he was choosing a quiet old inn in a side street
because he had been born there! Nevertheless, his words held that ring
of decision, of finality in judgment, which invariably forms part of
the equipment of men who have lived in wild lands and lorded it over
inferior races. Devar was vaguely conscious, and perhaps slightly
resentful, of this compelling quality in his new-found crony.
Oft-times it had quelled him for an instant during some stubbornly
contested argument, though he raged at himself just as often for
yielding to it, as if, forsooth, he were one of those patient,
animal-like, Chinese coolies of whose courage and endurance Curtis
spoke so admiringly.
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