sent situation suggested the fancy that he
was 'sporting' with her, and brought an awkward contemplativeness to her
face.

Springrove guessed her thoughts, and in answer to them simply said
'Yes.' Then they were silent again.

'If I had known an Amaryllis was coming here, I should not have made
arrangements for leaving,' he resumed.

Such levity, superimposed on the notion of 'sport', was intolerable to
Cytherea; for a woman seems never to see any but the serious side of her
attachment, though the most devoted lover has all the time a vague and
dim perception that he is losing his old dignity and frittering away his
time.

'But will you not try again to get on in your profession? Try once
more; do try once more,' she murmured. 'I am going to try again. I have
advertised for something to do.'

'Of course I will,' he said, with an eager gesture and smile. 'But we
must remember that the fame of Christopher Wren himself depended upon
the accident of a fire in Pudding Lane. My successes seem to come very
slowly. I often think, that before I am ready to live, it will be time
for me to die. However, I am trying--not for fame now, but for an easy
life of reasonable comfort.'

It is a melancholy truth for the middle classes, that in proportion
as they develop, by the study of poetry and art, their capacity for
conjugal love of the highest and purest kind, they limit the possibility
of their being able to exercise it--the very act putting out of their
power the attainment of means sufficient for marriage. The man who works
up a good income has had no time to learn love to its solemn extreme;
the man who has learnt that has had no time to get rich.

'And if you should fail--utterly fail to get that reasonable wealth,'
she said earnestly, 'don't be perturbed. The truly great stand upon no
middle ledge; they are either famous or unknown.'

'Unknown,' he said, 'if their ideas have been allowed to flow with
a sympathetic breadth. Famous only if they have been convergent and
exclusive.'

'Yes; and I am afraid from that, that my remark was but discouragement,
wearing the dress of comfort. Perhaps I was not quite right in--'

'It depends entirely upon what is meant by being truly great. But the
long and the short of the matter is, that men must stick to a thing if
they want to succeed in it--not giving way to over-much admiration
for the flowers they see growing in other people's borders; which I am
afraid has been my case.'