or Robert. Robert was at the end of
the room, a couple of volumes under his arm, another, which he was
reading, in his hand.

'This is _my_ corner,' he said, smiling and flushing a little, as his
friend moved up to him. 'Perhaps you don't know that I too am engaged
upon a great work.'

'A great work--you?'

Langham looked at his companion as though to find out whether his remark
was meant seriously or whether he might venture to be cynical. Elsmere
writing! Why should everybody write books? It was absurd! The scholar
who knows what toll scholarship takes of life is always apt to resent
the intrusion of the man of action into his domains. It looks to him
like a kind of ridiculous assumption that any one _d'un coeur leger_
can do what has cost him his heart's blood.

Robert understood something of the meaning of his tone, and replied
almost apologetically; he was always singularly modest about himself on
the intellectual side.

'Well, Grey is responsible. He gave me such a homily before I left
Oxford on the absolute necessity of keeping up with books, that I could
do nothing less than set up a "subject" at once. "Half the day," he used
to say to me, "you will be king of your world; the other half be the
slave of something which will take you out of your world into the
general world;" and then he would quote to me that saying he was always
bringing into lectures--I forget whose it is--"_The decisive events of
the world take place in the intellect._ It is the mission of books that
they help one to remember it." Altogether it was striking, coming from
one who has always had such a tremendous respect for practical life and
work, and I was much impressed by it. So blame him!'

Langham was silent. Elsmere had noticed that any allusion to Grey found
Langham less and less responsive.

'Well, what is the "great work"?' he said at last, abruptly.

'Historical. Oh, I should have written something without Grey; I have
always had a turn for it since I was a child. But he was clear that
history was especially valuable--especially necessary to a clergyman. I
felt he was right, entirely right. So I took my Final Schools' history
for a basis, and started on the Empire, especially the decay of the
Empire. Some day I mean to take up one of the episodes in the great
birth of Europe--the makings of France, I think, most likely. It seems
to lead farthest and tell most. I have been at work now nine months.'

'And are just getting int