s persistently as I did would have been an
encouragement to him to make some sort of effort himself, but he looked
upon me as a misguided creature, and took pains not to follow my
example.

"How do you know that you will ever marry Lucia? or make a success of
your books or anything?" he asked me one evening as we went upstairs
after dinner, he to dress before going to La Scarletta, I to work on
the MS.

"You are working for an uncertainty, a dream. It may never come off,
and then where will you be. Now, at least, I know what I am going to
have this evening. Such enjoyment as there is I get it, and there's an
end of it, and no worry about it. As for you, you are all worry; and
even granted that you get, in the end, something superlatively
satisfactory, why, it will hardly make up to you for all you have gone
through to get it!"

I said nothing. We had got up to our rooms by this time, and I flung
myself into the easy chair.

Howard went into his room and brought back his dress shoes to put them
on in mine, that he might follow up his argument.

"Now, look here, Vic, which of us two fellows is the most ready to go
out of the world? In the Bible or prayer-book or somewhere we are told
to live so that we may be willing and prepared to die any minute. Well,
that's just what I do. I haven't a scrap of a tie to life. I don't
think there will be anything better in it than what I have had already.
I'd go to-morrow. But you, you would not like it a bit, and you can't
deny it. You have got all the ties of your unsatisfied desires. You
want to get Lucia--you want to make your name. You would be awfully cut
up now if you were told you were going to be bundled out of life in ten
minutes; and I--I shouldn't care!"

Howard had finished fastening his patent shoes, and now sat back in his
chair, one leg crossed over the other, and his hands behind his head.

"Being brought into life is just like being invited to a feast from
which you may be called away at any minute. Well, if you have eaten and
drunk to satiety you will be only too glad to get up and go away and
sleep. But if you have sat at the table, hungering all the time and
repressing yourself, then, when the sudden call comes, and you must
rise and leave it for ever, think what a misery and bitterness to be
dragged away from the brilliant table, with all its dishes and its
wines untasted, its flowers unsmelt, and be crammed away into the
darkness--hungry, thirsty, and uns