Say that, by the dark prodigy I knew, the imagination of all evil HAD
been opened up to him: all the justice within me ached for the proof
that it could ever have flowered into an act.
He had never, at any rate, been such a little gentleman
as when, after our early dinner on this dreadful day,
he came round to me and asked if I shouldn't like him,
for half an hour, to play to me. David playing to Saul
could never have shown a finer sense of the occasion.
It was literally a charming exhibition of tact, of magnanimity,
and quite tantamount to his saying outright: "The true knights
we love to read about never push an advantage too far.
I know what you mean now: you mean that--to be let alone yourself
and not followed up--you'll cease to worry and spy upon me,
won't keep me so close to you, will let me go and come.
Well, I `come,' you see--but I don't go! There'll be plenty
of time for that. I do really delight in your society,
and I only want to show you that I contended for a principle."
It may be imagined whether I resisted this appeal or failed
to accompany him again, hand in hand, to the schoolroom.
He sat down at the old piano and played as he had never played;
and if there are those who think he had better have been kicking
a football I can only say that I wholly agree with them.
For at the end of a time that under his influence I had
quite ceased to measure, I started up with a strange sense
of having literally slept at my post.
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