abandoning many pleasures for
it, and living in it, and all the rest of it--in short, to pass the
bottle of smoke according to rule.'

'But it is well for a man to respect his own vocation, whatever it is;
and to think himself bound to uphold it, and to claim for it the respect
it deserves; is it not?' Arthur reasoned. 'And your vocation, Gowan,
may really demand this suit and service. I confess I should have thought
that all Art did.'

'What a good fellow you are, Clennam!' exclaimed the other, stopping
to look at him, as if with irrepressible admiration. 'What a capital
fellow! You have never been disappointed. That's easy to see.'

It would have been so cruel if he had meant it, that Clennam firmly
resolved to believe he did not mean it. Gowan, without pausing, laid his
hand upon his shoulder, and laughingly and lightly went on:

'Clennam, I don't like to dispel your generous visions, and I would give
any money (if I had any), to live in such a rose-coloured mist. But what
I do in my trade, I do to sell. What all we fellows do, we do to
sell. If we didn't want to sell it for the most we can get for it, we
shouldn't do it. Being work, it has to be done; but it's easily enough
done. All the rest is hocus-pocus.

Now here's one of the advantages, or disadvantages, of knowing a
disappointed man. You hear the truth.'

Whatever he had heard, and whether it deserved that name or another, it
sank into Clennam's mind. It so took root there, that he began to fear
Henry Gowan would always be a trouble to him, and that so far he had
gained little or nothing from the dismissal of Nobody, with all his
inconsistencies, anxieties, and contradictions. He found a contest still
always going on in his breast between his promise to keep Gowan in
none but good aspects before the mind of Mr Meagles, and his enforced
observation of Gowan in aspects that had no good in them. Nor could he
quite support his own conscientious nature against misgivings that he
distorted and discoloured himself, by reminding himself that he never
sought those discoveries, and that he would have avoided them with
willingness and great relief. For he never could forget what he had
been; and he knew that he had once disliked Gowan for no better reason
than that he had come in his way.

Harassed by these thoughts, he now began to wish the marriage over,
Gowan and his young wife gone, and himself left to fulfil his promise,
and discharge the generous function