ed. "Begin as soon as you get the chance; but I
think most people do. Only it is the chance that is generally wanting!"

"I don't know," Lucia said, looking away from me through the window,
where the flying sunny slopes of the valley sped by. "People muddle
away their chances of happiness in life. Ten years ago, when I was
fifteen and you were twenty--well, we might have married then, and felt
all that we feel now a whole ten years ago, which I have passed without
a single happy day."

A shade of sadness came into the eyes, and darkened them as she spoke.

"But why do you think of that now?" I asked. "It is no use. The ten
years have gone beyond recall, and, if you have not been happy, you
have something to show for the time. You have been working."

"Yes," Lucia repeated; "I have been working."

There was silence. I hoped I had recalled to her thoughts the great
canvas that stood complete in her studio. For myself, I knew that the
keenest touch of pleasure that stirred my frame now was held in the
ever-present thought that this day saw the birth of my work in Paris.
Not for worlds would I have hinted this to Lucia. To have breathed a
word that assigned even a part of my pleasure at the moment to anything
but the possession of herself was the last thing that I would have done.

Every pleasure is kin to every other, and they each tend to enhance and
strengthen another, so that in reality this inner pleasure of my
thoughts that reverted constantly to the Paris publishers was no enemy,
not even a rival, but rather a coadjutor of the passionate, personal
pleasure in the woman beside me. The brain already intoxicated with one
pleasant emotion lends itself more, not less, readily to another, just
as a brutal lover inflames his love with wine. In precisely the same
way, my passion for Lucia was inflamed by the wine of gratified
ambition. All the same, I said nothing touching on the book for fear
lest she should misunderstand me, nor hinted--that which I felt
myself--that this scene put back ten years, when I was full of vague
ambitions and unaccomplished plans, would not have possessed the zest
it had for me now.

Man, unfortunately, is not the desirer of one thing at a time, but of
many things, and the gratification of a single desire is not enough to
content him. If a person is both hungry and thirsty, you cannot satisfy
him, however kindly you may supply him with bread. Another line of
thought that ran side by side w