not."

"No, I am not weak," answered Roderick, with vehemence; "I maintain that
I am not weak! I am incomplete, perhaps; but I can't help that. Weakness
is a man's own fault!"

"Incomplete, then!" said Christina, with a laugh. "It 's the same thing,
so long as it keeps you from splendid achievement. Is it written, then,
that I shall really never know what I have so often dreamed of?"

"What have you dreamed of?"

"A man whom I can perfectly respect!" cried the young girl, with a
sudden flame. "A man, at least, whom I can unrestrictedly admire. I meet
one, as I have met more than one before, whom I fondly believe to be
cast in a larger mould than most of the vile human breed, to be large
in character, great in talent, strong in will! In such a man as that,
I say, one's weary imagination at last may rest; or it may wander if it
will, yet never need to wander far from the deeps where one's heart is
anchored. When I first knew you, I gave no sign, but you had struck
me. I observed you, as women observe, and I fancied you had the sacred
fire."

"Before heaven, I believe I have!" cried Roderick.

"Ah, but so little! It flickers and trembles and sputters; it goes out,
you tell me, for whole weeks together. From your own account, it 's ten
to one that in the long run you 're a failure."

"I say those things sometimes myself, but when I hear you say them they
make me feel as if I could work twenty years at a sitting, on purpose to
refute you!"

"Ah, the man who is strong with what I call strength," Christina
replied, "would neither rise nor fall by anything I could say! I am a
poor, weak woman; I have no strength myself, and I can give no strength.
I am a miserable medley of vanity and folly. I am silly, I am ignorant,
I am affected, I am false. I am the fruit of a horrible education, sown
on a worthless soil. I am all that, and yet I believe I have one merit!
I should know a great character when I saw it, and I should delight in
it with a generosity which would do something toward the remission of
my sins. For a man who should really give me a certain feeling--which
I have never had, but which I should know when it came--I would send
Prince Casamassima and his millions to perdition. I don't know what you
think of me for saying all this; I suppose we have not climbed up here
under the skies to play propriety. Why have you been at such pains to
assure me, after all, that you are a little man and not a great one, a
weak