"Ah?" he said easily, not pretending to doubt what subject was meant.
"I'm sorry. I thought that we had laid the old ghosts for good."
"I thought so, too. I was mistaken, it seems."
Across the table, the two men looked at each other. To Surface, the
subject must indeed have been the most unwelcome imaginable, especially
when forced upon him with so ominous a directness. Yet his manner was
the usual bland mask; his face, rather like a bad Roman senator's in the
days of the decline, had undergone no perceptible change.
"When I came here to live with you," said Queed, "I understood, of
course, that you would be contributing several times as much toward our
joint expenses as I. To a certain degree, you would be supporting me.
Naturally, I did not altogether like that. But you constantly assured
me, you may remember, that you would rather put your savings into a home
than anything else, that you could not manage it without my assistance,
and that you considered my companionship as fully offsetting the
difference in the money we paid. So I became satisfied that the
arrangement was honorable to us both.
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