using the word advisedly. I have just been reading De Quincey's
definition of talent and genius. He says--now pray listen, Gage--that
"talent is intellectual power of every kind which acts and manifests
itself by and through the will and the active forces. Genius, as the
verbal origin implies, is that much rarer species of intellectual power
which is derived from the genial nature, from the spirit of suffering
and enjoying, from the spirit of pleasure and pain, as organised more or
less perfectly; and this is independent of the will. It is a function of
the passive nature. Talent is conversant with the adaptation of means to
ends; but genius is conversant only with ends."'

'My dear Michael, I have no doubt that all this is exceedingly clever,
and that your memory is excellent, but why are we to be crushed beneath
all this analysis?'

'I was only drawing a comparison between you and Audrey,' he replied
tranquilly. 'I have been much struck by the idea involved in the word
"genial"; I had no conception we could evolve "genius" out of it. Audrey
is a very genial person; she also, in De Quincey's words, "moves in
headlong sympathy and concurrence with spontaneous power." This is his
definition, mark you; I lay no claim to it: "Genius works under a
rapture of necessity and spontaneity." I do love that expression,
"headlong sympathy"; it so well expresses the way Audrey works.'

Mrs. Harcourt gave a little assenting shrug. She was not quite pleased
with the turn the conversation had taken; abstract ideas were not to her
taste; the play of words in which Captain Burnett delighted bored her
excessively. She detected, too, a spice of irony. The comparison between
her and Audrey was not a flattering one: she was far cleverer than
Audrey; her masters and governesses would have acknowledged that fact.
And yet her cousin Michael was giving the divine gift of genius to her
more scantily endowed sister; genius! but, of course, it was only
Michael's nonsense: he would say anything when he was in the humour for
disputation. Even her own Percival had these contentious moods. The
masculine mind liked to play with moral ninepins, to send all kinds of
exploded theories rolling with their little ball of wit; it sharpened
their argumentative faculties, and kept them bright and ready for use.

'Mother and I were talking about these tiresome Blakes--not of Audrey,'
she said in a calm, matter-of-fact tone. 'If you were listening,
Michael, yo