To visit a student in his rooms
when he had only met him once, was a new experience, and Rex's stony
blue eyes seemed to ask the object of his coming. It was evident that
Rex only spoke of his habitation in order to break a silence which
might have been awkward.
'The fact is,' said Greif, as though answering a direct question, 'I
have been thinking of what you said the other day.'
'You do my remarks an honour which I believe they have never received
before,' replied Rex, bending his handsome head and smiling in his
brown beard.
'Do you remember? I said that I needed only one thing to make me happy.
I wanted to know the future. You answered that it must be easy to get
my wish. Were you in earnest, or did you speak thoughtlessly? That is
what I came to ask you.'
'Indeed?' Rex laughed. 'You said to yourself that your acquaintance was
either a fool or an absent-minded person, did you not?'
'Well--' Greif hesitated and smiled. 'Either visionary or absent-
minded,' he admitted. 'Yes, I could not explain your remark in any
other way.'
'Of course you could not, unless you suspected that I might be a
charlatan.'
'That did not occur to me--'
'It might have occurred to you, considering what I had said. It might
occur to you now, if I answered your question. But on the other hand it
is of no importance whether it does or not. My reply will contribute to
your peace of mind by helping you to catalogue a man you do not know
among the fools and charlatans of whom you have heard.
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