"
"Quite true," Thorpe assented, with patrician kindliness.
"You need fear nothing of that sort here, Gafferson. We give
you a free hand. Whatever you want, you have only to let
us know. And you can't do things too well to please us."
"Thank you, sir," said Gafferson, and really, as Thorpe
thought about it, the interview seemed at an end.
The master turned upon his heel, with a brief,
oblique nod over his shoulder, and made his way out into
the open air. Here, as he walked, he drew a succession
of long consolatory breaths. It was almost as if he had
emerged from the lethal presence of the fumigator itself.
He took the largest cigar from his case, lighted it,
and sighed smoke-laden new relief as he strolled back
toward the terrace.
But a few minutes before he had been struggling
helplessly in the coils of an evil nightmare.
These terrors seemed infinitely far behind him now.
He gave an indifferent parting glance backward at them,
as one might over his after-breakfast cigar at the
confused alarms of an early awakening hours before.
There was nothing worth remembering--only the shapeless
and foolish burden of a bad dream.
The assurance rose within him that he was not to have any
more such trouble. With a singular clearness of mental
vision he perceived that the part of him which brought
bad dreams had been sloughed off, like a serpent's skin.
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