“Well, I—­I suppose he would have to decline to—­”

“Man, he would grab it in a second!”

“Do you really think he would?”

“Think?—­I don’t think anything about it, I know it.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s not a fool.”

“So you think that if he were a fool, he—­”

“No, I don’t.  Fool or no fool, he would grab it.  Anybody would.  Anybody that’s alive.  And I’ve seen dead people that would get up and go for it.  I would myself.”

“This was balm, this was healing, this was rest and peace and comfort.”

“But I thought you were opposed to nobilities.”

“Transmissible ones, yes.  But that’s nothing.  I’m opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.”

“You’d take it?”

“I would leave the funeral of my dearest enemy to go and assume its burdens and responsibilities.”

Tracy thought a while, then said: 

“I don’t know that I quite get the bearings of your position.  You say you are opposed to hereditary nobilities, and yet if you had the chance you would—­”

“Take one?  In a minute I would.  And there isn’t a mechanic in that entire club that wouldn’t.  There isn’t a lawyer, doctor, editor, author, tinker, loafer, railroad president, saint-land, there isn’t a human being in the United States that wouldn’t jump at the chance!”

“Except me,” said Tracy softly.

“Except you!” Barrow could hardly get the words out, his scorn so choked him.  And he couldn’t get any further than that form of words; it seemed to dam his flow, utterly.  He got up and came and glared upon Tracy in a kind of outraged and unappeasable way, and said again, “Except you!” He walked around him—­inspecting him from one point of view and then another, and relieving his soul now and then by exploding that formula at him; “Except you!” Finally he slumped down into his chair with the air of one who gives it up, and said: 

“He’s straining his viscera and he’s breaking his heart trying to get some low-down job that a good dog wouldn’t have, and yet wants to let on that if he had a chance to scoop an earldom he wouldn’t do it.  Tracy, don’t put this kind of a strain on me.  Lately I’m not as strong as I was.”

“Well, I wasn’t meaning to put—­a strain on you, Barrow, I was only meaning to intimate that if an earldom ever does fall in my way—­”

“There—­I wouldn’t give myself any worry about that, if I was you.  And besides, I can settle what you would do.  Are you any different from me?”

“Well—­no.”

“Are you any better than me?”

“O,—­er—­why, certainly not.”

“Are you as good?  Come!”

“Indeed, I—­the fact is you take me so suddenly—­”