which
had in it a note of almost contemptuous irritation--'do you think _I_
am the man to get and keep a hold on a rampageous class of hundreds
of Scotch lads? Do you think _I_ am the man to carry on what Reid
began--Reid, that old fighter, that preacher of all sorts of jubilant
dogmas?'

He looked at Elsmere under his straight, black brows, imperiously. The
youth felt the nervous tension in the elder man's voice and manner, was
startled by a confidence never before bestowed upon him, close as that
unequal bond between them had been growing during the six months of his
Oxford life, and plucking up courage hurled at him a number of frank,
young expostulations, which really put into friendly shape all that was
being said about Langham in his College and in the University. Why was
he so self-distrustful, so absurdly diffident of responsibility, so bent
on hiding his great gifts under a bushel?

The tutor smiled sadly, and, sitting down, buried his head in his hands
and said nothing for a while. Then he looked up and stretched out a
hand toward a book which lay on a table near. It was the 'Reveries' of
Senancour. 'My answer is written _here_,' he said. 'It will seem to
you now, Elsmere, mere Midsummer madness. May it always seem so to you.
Forgive me. The pressure of solitude sometimes is too great.'

Elsmere looked up with one of his flashing, affectionate smiles, and
took the book from Langham's hand. He found on the open page a marked
passage:

"Oh swiftly passing seasons of life! There was a time when men seemed
to be sincere; when thought was nourished on friendship, kindness, love;
when dawn still kept its brilliance, and the night its peace. _I can_,
the soul said to itself, and _I will_; I will do all that is right--all
that is natural. But soon resistance, difficulty, unforeseen, coming we
know not whence, arrest us, undeceive us, and the human yoke grows heavy
on our necks; Thenceforward we become merely sharers in the common woe.
Hemmed in on all sides, we feel our faculties only to realize their
impotence: we have time and strength to do what we _must_, never what we
will. Men go on repeating the words work, genius, success. Fools! Will
all these resounding projects, though they enable us to cheat ourselves,
enable us to cheat the icy fate which rules us and our globe, wandering
forsaken through the vast silence of the heavens?"

Robert looked up startled, the book dropping from his hand. The words
sent a