ame von Marwitz.
"She has known you since boyhood. You have been very fortunate."

Gregory assented.

"She tells me that you are in the law," Madame von Marwitz pursued; "a
barrister. I should not have thought that. A diplomat; a soldier, it
should have been. Is it not so?"

Gregory had not wanted to be a barrister. It did not please him that
Madame von Marwitz should guess so accurately at a disappointment that
had made his youth bitter. "I'm a younger son, you see," he said. "And I
had to make my living."

When Madame von Marwitz's gaze grew more intent she did not narrow her
eyes, but opened them more widely. She opened them more widely now,
putting back her head a little. "Ah," she said. "That was hard. That
meant suffering. You are caged in a calling you do not care for."

"Oh, no," said Gregory, smiling; "I'm very well off; I'm quite
contented."

"Contented?" she raised her crooked eyebrow. "Are you indeed so
fortunate?--or so unfortunate?"

To this large question Gregory made no reply, continuing to offer her
the non-committal coolness of his smile. He was not liking Madame von
Marwitz, and he was becoming aware that if one didn't like her one did
not appear to advantage in talking with her. He cast about in his mind
for an excuse to get away.

"The law," Madame von Marwitz mused, her eyes dwelling on him. "It is
stony; yet with stone one builds. You would not be content, I think,
with the journeyman's work of the average lawyer. You shape; you create;
you have before you the vision of the strong fortress to be built where
the weak may find refuge. You are an architect, not a mason. Only so
could you find contentment in your calling."

"I'm afraid that I don't think about it like that," said Gregory. "I
should say that the fortress is built already."

There was now a change in her cold sweetness; her smile became a little
ambiguous. "You remind me," she said, "that I was speaking in somewhat
pretentious similes. I was not asking you what had been done, but what
you hoped to do. I was asking--it was that that interested me in you, as
it does in all the young men I meet--what was the ideal you brought to
your calling."

It was as though, with all her sweetness, she had seen through his
critical complacency and were correcting the manners of a conceited boy.
Gregory was a good deal taken aback. And it was with a touch of boyish
sulkiness that he replied: "I don't think, really, that I can claim
ideals