h perfection--!" the young man sincerely sighed. "I talked
of them the other Sunday with Miss Fancourt."

It produced on the Master's part a laugh of odd acrimony. "Yes, they'll
'talk' of them as much as you like! But they'll do little to help one to
them. There's no obligation of course; only you strike me as capable,"
he went on. "You must have thought it all over. I can't believe you're
without a plan. That's the sensation you give me, and it's so rare that
it really stirs one up--it makes you remarkable. If you haven't a plan,
if you _don't_ mean to keep it up, surely you're within your rights; it's
nobody's business, no one can force you, and not more than two or three
people will notice you don't go straight. The others--_all_ the rest,
every blest soul in England, will think you do--will think you are
keeping it up: upon my honour they will! I shall be one of the two or
three who know better. Now the question is whether you can do it for two
or three. Is that the stuff you're made of?"

It locked his guest a minute as in closed throbbing arms. "I could do it
for one, if you were the one."

"Don't say that; I don't deserve it; it scorches me," he protested with
eyes suddenly grave and glowing. "The 'one' is of course one's self,
one's conscience, one's idea, the singleness of one's aim. I think of
that pure spirit as a man thinks of a woman he has in some detested hour
of his youth loved and forsaken. She haunts him with reproachful eyes,
she lives for ever before him. As an artist, you know, I've married for
money." Paul stared and even blushed a little, confounded by this
avowal; whereupon his host, observing the expression of his face, dropped
a quick laugh and pursued: "You don't follow my figure. I'm not speaking
of my dear wife, who had a small fortune--which, however, was not my
bribe. I fell in love with her, as many other people have done. I refer
to the mercenary muse whom I led to the altar of literature. Don't, my
boy, put your nose into _that_ yoke. The awful jade will lead you a
life!"

Our hero watched him, wondering and deeply touched. "Haven't you been
happy!"

"Happy? It's a kind of hell."

"There are things I should like to ask you," Paul said after a pause.

"Ask me anything in all the world. I'd turn myself inside out to save
you."

"To 'save' me?" he quavered.

"To make you stick to it--to make you see it through. As I said to you
the other night at Summe