"The worthy man has a happy imagination. He goes through a campaign
daily."

"It seems to one to dignify his calling."

"I like his enthusiasm."

The lady withdrew into her thoughts; Weyburn fell upon his work.

Mention of the military cloak of enthusiasm covering Shalders, brought
the scarce credible old time to smite at his breast, in the presence of
these eyes. A ringing of her title of Lady Ormont rendered the present
time the incredible.

"I can hardly understand a young Frenchman's not entering the army," she
said.

"The Napoleonic legend is weaker now," said he.

"The son of an officer!"

"Grandson."

"It was his choice to be,--he gave it up without reluctance?"

"Emile obeyed the command of his parents," Weyburn answered; and he was
obedient to the veiled direction of her remark, in speaking of himself:
"I had a reason, too."

"One wonders!"

"It would have impoverished my mother's income to put aside a small
allowance for me for years. She would not have hesitated. I then set my
mind on the profession of schoolmaster."

"Emile Grenat was a brave boy. Has he no regrets?"

"Neither of us has a regret."

"He began ambitiously."

"It's the way at the beginning."

"It is not usually abjured."

"I'm afraid we neither of us 'dignify our calling' by discontent with
it!"

A dusky flash, worth seeing, came on her cheeks. "I respect
enthusiasms," she said; and it was as good to him to hear as the begging
pardon, though clearly she could not understand enthusiasm for the
schoolmaster's career.

Light of evidence was before him, that she had a friendly curiosity to
know what things had led to their new meeting under these conditions.
He sketched them cursorily; there was little to tell--little, that is;
appealing to a romantic mind for interest. Aware of it, by sympathy,
he degraded the narrative to a flatness about as cheering as a suburban
London Sunday's promenade. Sympathy caused the perverseness. He felt her
disillusionment; felt with it and spread a feast of it. She had to hear
of studies at Caen and at a Paris Lycee; French fairly mastered; German,
the same; Italian, the same; after studies at Heidelberg, Asti, and
Florence; between four and five months at Athens (he was needlessly
precise), in tutorship with a young nobleman: no events, nor a spot of
colour. Thus did he wilfully, with pain to himself, put an extinguisher
on the youth painted brilliant and eminent in a maiden's imagination