eing
unbearable to us, we paint it over with landscapes of our own devising.
And that is what the unthinking mind calls the future. Any one can
paint these pictures on the wall, and to complain of its bareness is to
acknowledge the poverty of one's own imagination wishing for
something,--never mind what. The higher, the more unattainable, the
better. Only desire earnestly, and you will feel yourself alive again.
Your misfortune, my friend, is that you have not to work for your daily
bread. A settled income is only a blessing to those to whom the
attainment of the trifling and external pleasures of life seems worth
the trouble of an effort. You are wise enough to set no value on what
the world can give you. You are neither vain nor ambitious. Therefore
you do not exercise your capacities in wrestling for position,
recognition, honors, or fame. On the other hand, you have no need to
trouble yourself about the bare necessities of life, and are thereby
deprived of another occasion for bringing your strength into play. Now,
you are provided with organic forces, and it is the circumstance that
these forces are lying fallow that affects you like a malady. It is in
work alone that you can hope to find a cure, or at least an
improvement. Accordingly, if you have not sufficient strength of will
to set yourself some task, my will shall come to your aid. I suggest,
nay, I insist, that you proceed manfully with your 'History of Human
Ignorance,' about which I have heard nothing for months, and that you
show me at least the first volume ready for the press by the end of
this time next year."

Wilhelm caught desperately at this advice, offered to him by his friend
in the paradoxical form of a command. He got out his books and papers
again, and began devoting his mornings to work. Pilar was delighted.
She was far too wise not to know that honeymoons do not last forever,
and although she was persuaded that she, for her part, would never
desire anything better than to be always at Wilhelm's side, passing the
time in interminable conversations about herself and himself, in
kissing and fondling, she quite understood that that was not enough to
satisfy a man accustomed to a wider range of pursuits. She had looked
forward with anxiety to the moment when mere love-making would pall
upon him, and he would begin to be bored, and wish for a change. She
had kept a sharp lookout for the approach of this ticklish moment that
her ingenious mind mig