"
West mused. "He has a wonderful genius for crushing all the interest out
of any subject he touches, hasn't he? Yet manifestly the first duty of
an editorial is to get itself read. How old do you think he is?"
"Oh--anywhere from twenty-five to--forty-seven."
"He'll be twenty-four this month. I see him sometimes at the office, you
know, where he still treats me like an intrusive subscription agent. In
some ways, he is undoubtedly the oldest man in the world. In another way
he hasn't any age at all. Spiritually he is unborn--he simply doesn't
exist at all. I diagnose his complaint as ingrowing egoism of a
singularly virulent variety."
It was beyond Sharlee's power to controvert this diagnosis. Mr. Queed
had in fact impressed her as the most frankly and grossly self-centred
person she had ever seen in her life. But unlike West, her uppermost
feeling in regard to him was a strong sense of pity. She knew things
about his life that West did not know and probably never would. For
though the little Doctor of Mrs. Paynter's had probably not intended to
give her a confidence, and certainly had no right to do so, she had thus
regarded what he said to her in the dining-room that night, and of his
pathetic situation in regard to a father she never meant to say a word
to anybody.
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