and things a thousand times worse, that set my head in a whirl,
as hour after hour slipped on, and I still gazed, spell-bound, on these
Chimeras and Typhons,--these symbols of the Destroying Principle. "Poor
Vivian!" said I, as I rose at last; "if thou readest these books with
pleasure or from habit, no wonder that thou seemest to me so obtuse
about right and wrong, and to have a great cavity where thy brain should
have the bump of 'conscientiousness' in full salience!"

Nevertheless, to do those demoniacs justice, I had got through time
imperceptibly by their pestilent help; and I was startled to see, by my
watch, how late it was. I had just resolved to leave a line fixing
an appointment for the morrow, and so depart, when I heard Vivian's
knock,--a knock that had great character in it, haughty, impatient,
irregular; not a neat, symmetrical, harmonious, unpretending knock, but
a knock that seemed to set the whole house and street at defiance:
it was a knock bullying--a knock ostentatious--a knock irritating and
offensive--impiger and iracundus.

But the step that came up the stairs did not suit the knock; it was a
step light, yet firm--slow, yet elastic.

The maid-servant who had opened the door had, no doubt, informed Vivian
of my visit, for he did not seem surprised to see me; but he cast that
hurried, suspicious look round the room which a man is apt to cast
when he has left his papers about and finds some idler, on whose
trustworthiness he by no means depends, seated in the midst of the
unguarded secrets. The look was not flattering; but my conscience was so
unreproachful that I laid all the blame upon the general suspiciousness
of Vivian's character.

"Three hours, at least, have I been here!" said I, maliciously.

"Three hours!"--again the look.

"And this is the worst secret I have discovered,"--and I pointed to
those literary Manicheans.

"Oh!" said he, carelessly, "French novels! I don't wonder you stayed
so long. I can't read your English novels,--flat and insipid; there are
truth and life here."

"Truth and life!" cried I, every hair on my head erect with
astonishment. "Then hurrah for falsehood and death!"

"They don't please you,--no accounting for tastes."

"I beg your pardon,--I account for yours, if you really take for truth
and life monsters so nefast and flagitious. For Heaven's sake, my
dear fellow, don't suppose that any man could get on in England,--get
anywhere but to the Old Bailey o