vision, or at any rate the
appreciation, of a closer tie into everything she had done for him, the
case was conspicuously simple and his course unmistakably plain. That is
why he had been gay when he came out of the house to look for her: he
could be gay when his course was plain. He could be all the gayer,
naturally, I must add, that, in turning things over as he had done half
the night, what he had turned up oftenest was the recognition that Julia
now had a new personal power with him. It was not for nothing that she
had thrown herself personally into his life. She had by her act made him
live twice as intensely, and such an office, such a service, if a man
had accepted and deeply tasted it, was certainly a thing to put him on
his honour. He took it as distinct that there was nothing he could do in
preference that wouldn't be spoiled for him by any deflexion from that
point. His mother had made him uncomfortable by bringing it so heavily
up that Julia was in love with him--he didn't like in general to be told
such things; but the responsibility seemed easier to carry and he was
less shy about it when once he was away from other eyes, with only
Julia's own to express that truth and with indifferent nature all
about. Besides, what discovery had he made this morning but that he also
was in love?

"You've got to be a very great man, you know," she said to him in the
middle of the lake. "I don't know what you mean about my salon, but I
_am_ ambitious."

"We must look at life in a large, bold way," he concurred while he
rested his oars.

"That's what I mean. If I didn't think you could I wouldn't look at
you."

"I could what?"

"Do everything you ought--everything I imagine, I dream of. You _are_
clever: you can never make me believe the contrary after your speech on
Tuesday, Don't speak to me! I've seen, I've heard, and I know what's in
you. I shall hold you to it. You're everything you pretend not to be."

Nick looked at the water while she talked. "Will it always be so
amusing?" he asked.

"Will what always be?"

"Why my career."

"Shan't I make it so?"

"Then it will be yours--it won't be mine," said Nick.

"Ah don't say that--don't make me out that sort of woman! If they should
say it's me I'd drown myself."

"If they should say what's you?"

"Why your getting on. If they should say I push you and do things for
you. Things I mean that you can't do yourself."

"Well, won't you do them? It's just wha