are
going to bring out the book after all?" he asked quietly.

I coloured with anger and annoyance at the sneer. "No," I answered,
simply, "I have not."

"Then, my dear Victor, you know it is quite useless to re-open this old
question. I have told you before, and I can only repeat it now, I am
not going to make you an independent allowance, that you may marry your
cousin and comfortably settle down into a do-nothing existence."

"I never propose such an existence," I answered calmly. "Have I ever
led it? am I leading it now?"

"No, because just now you have every incentive to work, and you have
all your energies turned in that one direction, but with a secured
income, independence, and married to this girl, I know exactly what you
would become, and if I can prevent it, I am not going to have my son a
confirmed idler about town."

"I can't think how you can so misjudge me," I said. "If you would make
me an allowance--say 300 Pounds Sterling a year--half the rent of this
house we live in!" I added bitterly. "I should marry Lucia, but on that
account I should not neglect the work. Incentive! I should have every
inducement to work then as now!--if inducement were necessary--Which it
is not. I work now, not because I am driven by motives and wishes, but
because to write is as natural to me as to sleep or breathe!"

"Please remember you are talking to a sane Englishman," he answered
coldly; "and if you want me to listen to you, you must talk sense."

"Very good," I said, bringing my teeth down nervously on the cigar.
"Put it entirely on the ground of motive if you like; I should want to
succeed then doubly, and success is only a thing of time. It will come
one day to me, as it has come to others who have had the same
difficulties at first."

My father smiled sceptically.

"We shall see. In any case, if you are so certain of success, you can't
object to the fulfilment of your wishes resting on so sure a
contingency!"

"That has nothing to do with it. I did not say how long success might
not be deferred, and I am unwilling to wait in these circumstances."

"Ah!--delightful frankness!" he returned derisively, and I looked away
from him into the fire.

It shot across me then, amongst my own worrying thoughts, how strange
it is that one human being should have so little sympathy with another,
that where one can, without the least annoyance to himself, confer all
that another desires, there seems always some inexplic