The instant over, he says, sensibly touched:
'I am afraid I am but a shallow, surface kind of fellow, Jack, and
that my headpiece is none of the best. But I needn't say I am
young; and perhaps I shall not grow worse as I grow older. At all
events, I hope I have something impressible within me, which feels
- deeply feels - the disinterestedness of your painfully laying
your inner self bare, as a warning to me.'
Mr. Jasper's steadiness of face and figure becomes so marvellous
that his breathing seems to have stopped.
'I couldn't fail to notice, Jack, that it cost you a great effort,
and that you were very much moved, and very unlike your usual self.
Of course I knew that you were extremely fond of me, but I really
was not prepared for your, as I may say, sacrificing yourself to me
in that way.'
Mr. Jasper, becoming a breathing man again without the smallest
stage of transition between the two extreme states, lifts his
shoulders, laughs, and waves his right arm.
'No; don't put the sentiment away, Jack; please don't; for I am
very much in earnest. I have no doubt that that unhealthy state of
mind which you have so powerfully described is attended with some
real suffering, and is hard to bear. But let me reassure you,
Jack, as to the chances of its overcoming me. I don't think I am
in the way of it. In some few months less than another year, you
know, I shall carry Pussy off from school as Mrs. Edwin Drood. I
shall then go engineering into the East, and Pussy with me.
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