" Once when Pierre called him "mon ami," and asked
him to come and spend an evening in his cottage, he said:
"Yes, I will go. But--pardon me--not as your friend. Let us be plain
with each other. I never met a man of your stamp before--"
"A professional gambler--yes? Bien?"
"You interest me; I like you; you have great cleverness--"
"A priest once told me I had a great brain-there is a difference. Well?"
"You are like no man I ever met before. Yours is a life like none
I ever knew. I would rather talk with you than with any other man in the
country, and yet--"
"And yet you would not take me to your home? That is all right. I
expect nothing. I accept the terms. I know what I am and what you are.
I like men who are square. You would go out of your way to do me a good
turn."
It was on his tongue to speak of Katy Cline, but he hesitated: it was not
fair to the girl, he thought, though what he had intended was for her
good. He felt he had no right to assume that Liddall knew how things
were. The occasion slipped by.
But the same matter had been in his mind when, later, he asked, "What is
the worst thing that can happen to a man?"
Liddall looked at him long, and then said: "To stand between two fires."
Pierre smiled: it was an answer after his own heart. Liddall remembered
it very well in the future.
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