"Enough to knock a man over," he said, "isn't it?
I'd give something for a drink of beer." He produced his everlasting pipe, from sheer force of habit.

"Got a match ?" he asked.
Arnold's mind was too preoccupied to notice the question.
"I hope you won't think I'm making light of your father's illness," he said, earnestly.

"But it seems to me--I must say it--it seems to me that the poor girl has the first claim on you." Geoffrey looked at him in surly amazement.
"The first claim on me?
Do you think I'm going to risk being cut out of my father's will?
Not for the best woman that ever put on a petticoat!" Arnold's admiration of his friend was the solidly-founded admiration of many years; admiration for a man who could row, box, wrestle, jump--above all, who could swim--as few other men could perform those exercises in contemporary England.

But that answer shook his faith.

Only for the moment--unhappily for Arnold, only for the moment.
"You know best," he returned, a little coldly.