what
people so mistakingly call _common_ sense.'

'And she'd recommend me, perhaps, not to quarrel with my father, and to go
and break the stones.'

'Were you ever in love, Cousin Dick?' asked she, in a tone every accent of
which betokened earnestness and even gravity.

'Perhaps I might say never. I have spooned or flirted or whatever the name
of it might be, but I was never seriously attached to one girl, and unable
to think of anything but her. But what has your question to do with this?'

'Everything. If you really loved a girl--that is, if she filled every
corner of your heart, if she was first in every plan and project of your
life, not alone her wishes and her likings, but her very words and the
sound of her voice--if you saw her in everything that was beautiful, and
heard her in every tone that delighted you--if to be moving in the air
she breathed was ecstasy, and that heaven itself without her was
cheerless--if--'

'Oh, don't go on, Nina. None of these ecstasies could ever be mine. I have
no nature to be moved or moulded in this fashion. I might be very fond of a
girl, but she'd never drive me mad if she left me for another.'

'I hope she may, then, if it be with such false money you would buy her,'
said she fiercely. 'Do you know,' added she, after a pause, 'I was almost
on the verge of saying, go and break the stones; the _metier_ is not much
beneath you, after all!'

'This is scarcely civil, mademoiselle; see what my candour has brought upon
me!'

'Be as candid as you like upon the faults of your nature. Tell
every wickedness that you have done or dreamed of, but don't own to
cold-heartedness. For _that_ there is no sympathy!'

'Let us go back a bit, then,' said he, 'and let us suppose that I did love
in the same fervent and insane manner you spoke of, what and how would it
help me here?'

'Of course it would. Of all the ingenuity that plotters talk of, of all the
imagination that poets dream, there is nothing to compare with love. To
gain a plodding subsistence a man will do much. To win the girl he loves,
to make her his own, he will do everything: he will strive, and strain, and
even starve to win her. Poverty will have nothing mean if confronted for
her, hardship have no suffering if endured for her sake. With her before
him, all the world shows but one goal; without her, life is a mere dreary
task, and himself a hired labourer.'

'I confess, after all this, that I don't see how breaking sto