s." Maurice was leaning with both elbows upon
the table, his fingers plunged through his disordered hair, his brows
almost fiercely contracted, and his wan face bent over the volume before
him.

"I found some grand pictures in that book," remarked the young artist.
"Which are you contemplating?"

"No pictures. I have not your eye for pictures," answered Maurice, with
something more than a touch of impatience. "I am moved, haunted,
tormented by truths which have more power than all the ideal pictures
pen ever drew, or brush ever painted. You place me here before your
library, you lure me to read, and every book I open utters words that
make my compulsory mode of existence a reproach, a disgrace, a misery to
me. Read this, for instance: 'Life is a drama, not a monologue. A drama
is derived from a Greek word which signifies _to do_. Every actor in the
drama has something to do which helps on the progress of the
whole,--that is the object for which the author created him. _Do your
part_ and let the _Great Play_ go on!' _Do? do?_" continued Maurice, in
an excited tone as he finished the quotation; "it is a torment worthy of
a place in Dante's Inferno to know that there is nothing one is
permitted to _do_! I too am an actor in the Great Drama; but I have no
part to play save that of lay figure, motionless and voiceless; yet,
unhappy, not being deprived of sensibility, I am goaded to desperation
by inward taunting because I can do nothing."

"The play is not ended yet," answered Ronald, with as much cheerfulness
as he could command, for his friend's depression affected his
sympathetic nature. "We may not comprehend our _roles_ in the beginning;
we may have to study long before we can thoroughly conceive, then
idealize, then act them."

"I could bear that mine should be a sad, if it were only an active one,"
returned Maurice, again fixing his eyes upon the book.

Ronald could make no reply to a sentiment so thoroughly in accordance
with his own views. He constantly pondered upon the possibilities
through which his friend might be freed from the shackles that bound him
to the effeminate serfdom of idleness; but the magic that could unrivet
those fetters had not yet been revealed. Still he was sometimes stirred
by a mysterious prescience that they would be loosened, and through his
instrumentality.

Ronald's nature was essentially practical without being prosaic. The
rich ore of poetry, inseparable from all exquisitely fin