is very good to have an eye for such things,--as you have,
Paul. But I fancy that taste comes with, or at any rate forebodes, an
effete civilization.'

'I am sorry that mine should be effete,' he said smiling.

'You know what I mean, Paul. I speak of nations, not individuals.
Civilization was becoming effete, or at any rate men were, in the time
of the great painters; but Savonarola and Galileo were individuals.
You should throw your lot in with a new people. This railway to Mexico
gives you the chance.'

'Are the Mexicans a new people?'

'They who will rule the Mexicans are. All American women I dare say
have bad taste in gowns,--and so the vain ones and rich ones send to
Paris for their finery; but I think our taste in men is generally
good. We like our philosophers; we like our poets; we like our genuine
workmen;--but we love our heroes. I would have you a hero, Paul.' He got
up from his chair and walked about the room in an agony of despair. To
be told that he was expected to be a hero at the very moment in his
life in which he felt more devoid of heroism, more thoroughly given up
to cowardice than he had ever been before, was not to be endured! And
yet, with what utmost stretch of courage,--even though he were willing
to devote himself certainly and instantly to the worst fate that he
had pictured to himself,--could he immediately rush away from these
abstract speculations, encumbered as they were with personal flattery,
into his own most unpleasant, most tragic matter! It was the unfitness
that deterred him and not the possible tragedy. Nevertheless, through
it all, he was sure,--nearly sure,--that she was playing her game, and
playing it in direct antagonism to the game which she knew that he
wanted to play. Would it not be better that he should go away and
write another letter? In a letter he could at any rate say what he had
to say;--and having said it he would then strengthen himself to adhere
to it.

'What makes you so uneasy?' she asked; still speaking in her most
winning way, caressing him with the tones of her voice. 'Do you not
like me to say that I would have you be a hero?'

'Winifred,' he said, 'I came here with a purpose, and I had better
carry it out.'

'What purpose?' She still leaned forward, but now supported her face
on her two hands, with her elbows resting on her knees, looking at him
intently. But one would have said that there was only love in her
eyes;--love which might be disappoin