annot be bad for a clerk. You
try to despise these good things, but you only try--you don't
succeed."

"Don't I?" said Mr. Arabin, still musing, not knowing what he said.

"I ask you the question: do you succeed?"

Mr. Arabin looked at her piteously. It seemed to him as though he
were being interrogated by some inner spirit of his own, to whom he
could not refuse an answer, and to whom he did not dare to give a
false reply.

"Come, Mr. Arabin, confess; do you succeed? Is money so contemptible?
Is worldly power so worthless? Is feminine beauty a trifle to be so
slightly regarded by a wise man?"

"Feminine beauty!" said he, gazing into her face, as though all the
feminine beauty in the world were concentrated there. "Why do you say
I do not regard it?"

"If you look at me like that, Mr. Arabin, I shall alter my
opinion--or should do so, were I not of course aware that I have no
beauty of my own worth regarding."

The gentleman blushed crimson, but the lady did not blush at all. A
slightly increased colour animated her face, just so much so as to
give her an air of special interest. She expected a compliment from
her admirer, but she was rather gratified than otherwise by finding
that he did not pay it to her. Messrs. Slope and Thorne, Messrs.
Brown, Jones, and Robinson, they all paid her compliments. She was
rather in hopes that she would ultimately succeed in inducing Mr.
Arabin to abuse her.

"But your gaze," said she, "is one of wonder, not of admiration. You
wonder at my audacity in asking you such questions about yourself."

"Well, I do rather," said he.

"Nevertheless, I expect an answer, Mr. Arabin. Why were women made
beautiful if men are not to regard them?"

"But men do regard them," he replied.

"And why not you?"

"You are begging the question, Madame Neroni."

"I am sure I shall beg nothing, Mr. Arabin, which you will not grant,
and I do beg for an answer. Do you not as a rule think women below
your notice as companions? Let us see. There is the Widow Bold looking
round at you from her chair this minute. What would you say to her as
a companion for life?"

Mr. Arabin, rising from his position, leaned over the sofa and looked
through the drawing-room door to the place where Eleanor was seated
between Bertie Stanhope and Mr. Slope. She at once caught his glance
and averted her own. She was not pleasantly placed in her present
position. Mr. Slope was doing his best to attract her attention,