Gideon stares at him and, were they a few years younger, his mouth might have dropped open. While the full symbolism of that particular ring isn't known to him, he can guess what--or rather, who--it implies.

For a moment, his only thought is, incongruously, I am too old for this. It's an absurd thought, and he knows it, considering that he's not only old, he's rather conspicuously dead. A dead man of forty-five receiving the sort of raving gesture that belongs to Felix's relative youth and vitality, entirely uncertain what he should do with it.

This is everything he's ever wanted of Felix, everything he's wanted to hear. But it leaves him feeling unsettled and apprehensive. After years, can he really suppose Felix means it? Won't things settle into the same affairs the moment he steps back over the threshold of the man's rooms? Mildmay won't be there, but it might as well be the same otherwise. And then comes the bickering, the screaming, and this time, the utter inability to scream back, even in thought.

It won't be the same. It might well be worse.

Felix, he writes out again, writing the name with all the care he might, I would like to believe you. But I can't return to the Mirador. And I won't remake it here. I would need - He pauses. Time. And proof.