XXIII “Oh, more or less.” I fancy my smile was pale. “Not absolutely. We shouldn’t like that!” I went on. “No—I suppose we shouldn’t. Of course we have the others.” “We have the others—we have indeed the others,” I concurred. “Yet even though we have them,” he returned, still with his hands in his pockets and planted there in front of me, “they don’t much count, do they?” I made the best of it, but I felt wan. “It depends on what you call ‘much’!” “Yes”—with all accommodation—“everything depends!” On this, however, he faced to the window again and presently