I want your opinion, your
impression. I want to see how she will affect you. I don't say I ask
for your advice; that, of course, you will not undertake to give. But
I desire a definition, a characterization; you know you toss off those
things. I don't see why I should n't tell you all this--I have always
told you everything. I have never pretended to know anything about
women, but I have always supposed that you knew everything. You
certainly have always had the tone of that sort of omniscience. So come
here as soon as possible and let me see that you are not a humbug. She
's a very handsome girl."
Longueville was so much amused with this appeal that he very soon
started for Germany. In the reader, Gordon Wright's letter will,
perhaps, excite surprise rather than hilarity; but Longueville thought
it highly characteristic of his friend. What it especially pointed to
was Gordon's want of imagination--a deficiency which was a matter of
common jocular allusion between the two young men, each of whom kept a
collection of acknowledged oddities as a playground for the other's
wit. Bernard had often spoken of his comrade's want of imagination as a
bottomless pit, into which Gordon was perpetually inviting him to lower
himself.
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