right you're too idle to do it. You
told me once that we shall be judged by our intentions, not by our
accomplishments. I thought it a grand remark. But we must intend to
accomplish--not sit intending on a chair."

"You are wonderful!" he said gravely.

"Oh, you appreciate me!" she burst out again. "I wish you didn't. You
appreciate us all--see good in all of us. And all the time you are
dead--dead--dead. Look, why aren't you angry?" She came up to him, and
then her mood suddenly changed, and she took hold of both his hands.
"You are so splendid, Mr. Herriton, that I can't bear to see you wasted.
I can't bear--she has not been good to you--your mother."

"Miss Abbott, don't worry over me. Some people are born not to do
things. I'm one of them; I never did anything at school or at the Bar.
I came out to stop Lilia's marriage, and it was too late. I came out
intending to get the baby, and I shall return an 'honourable failure.' I
never expect anything to happen now, and so I am never disappointed.
You would be surprised to know what my great events are. Going to the
theatre yesterday, talking to you now--I don't suppose I shall ever
meet anything greater. I seem fated to pass through the world without
colliding with it or moving it--and I'm sure I can't tell you whether
the fate's good or evil. I don't die--I don't fall in love. And if other
people die or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there.
You are quite right; life to me is just a spectacle, which--thank God,
and thank Italy, and thank you--is now more beautiful and heartening
than it has ever been before."

She said solemnly, "I wish something would happen to you, my dear
friend; I wish something would happen to you."

"But why?" he asked, smiling. "Prove to me why I don't do as I am."

She also smiled, very gravely. She could not prove it. No argument
existed. Their discourse, splendid as it had been, resulted in nothing,
and their respective opinions and policies were exactly the same when
they left the church as when they had entered it.

Harriet was rude at lunch. She called Miss Abbott a turncoat and a
coward to her face. Miss Abbott resented neither epithet, feeling that
one was justified and the other not unreasonable. She tried to avoid
even the suspicion of satire in her replies. But Harriet was sure
that she was satirical because she was so calm. She got more and more
violent, and Philip at one time feared that she would come to blo