"Yes," replied Marindin sadly; "the struggle for existence will always
continue among the unborn."
Suddenly a thought set me a-grin. "Why, what difference can the choice of
parents make after all?" I cried. "Suppose you had picked my parents--you
would have been I, and I should be somebody else, and somebody else would
be you. And there would be the three of us, just the same as now," and I
chuckled aloud.
"You seem to have had pleasant dreams, old man," replied Marindin. But
his voice sounded strange and far away.
* * * * *
I opened my eyes wide in astonishment, and saw him buried in an
easy-chair, with a book in his hand and two tears rolling down his
cheeks.
"I've been reading of Tiny Tim while you snoozed," he said
apologetically.
XXIII
PATER AND PROSE
It seems only yesterday--and it is only yesteryear--since Walter Pater
sat by my side in a Club garden, and listened eloquently to my
after-lunch _causerie_, and now he is gone
To where, beyond the Voices, there is Peace.
You grasp that his eloquence was oracular, silent. He had an air. There
was in him--as in his work--a suggestion of aloofness from the homespun
world. I suspect he had never heard Chevalier.
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