These cut-off sentences were
like a secret code between them. 'And ten years younger! Almost like a
boy again. I wonder if---' He did not permit himself to finish the
thought. He tried to remember if he himself had looked like that
perhaps in the days of long ago when he courted Albinia Lucy--an air
of joy and secrecy and an absent-minded manner that might any moment
flame into vehement, concentrated action. For this was the impression
his employer had made upon him. Only he could not quite remember those
far-off, happy days. There was ecstasy in them; that he knew. And
there was ecstasy in Henry Rogers now; that he divined.
'He oughtn't to,' he reflected, as he hurried in another taxi with the
luggage. 'All his yearnings would be satisfied if he did, his life
flow into a single channel instead of into many.'
He did not think about his own position and his salary.
'He won't,' he decided as the cab stopped at the door; 'he's not that
kind of man.' Minks had insight; he knew men. 'No artist ever ought
to. We are so few, and the world has need of us.' His own case was an
exception that had justified itself, for he was but a man of talent,
and talent did not need an exclusive asceticism; whereas his employer
was a man of genius, and no one woman had the right to monopolise what
was intended to sweeten the entire universe.
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