of idlers clustered round the
window. "There's nothing that man can do that I can't do," said Paul.

"You're twenty times better looking," said Jane.

"I have more intelligence," said Paul.

"Of course," said Jane.

"I'm going to be an actor," said Paul.

"Oh!" cried Jane in sudden rapture. Then her sturdy common-sense
asserted itself. "But can you act?"

"I'm sure I could, if I tried. You've only got to have the genius to
start with and the rest is easy."

As she did not dare question his genius, she remained silent.

"I'm going to be an actor," said he, "and when I'm not acting I shall
be a poet."

In spite of her adoration Jane could not forbear a shaft of raillery.
"You'll leave yourself some time to be a musician, won't you?"

He laughed. His alert and retentive mind had seized, long ago, on
Rowlatt's recommendation at the Little Bear Inn, and he had developed,
perhaps half consciously, a half sense of humour. A whole sense,
however, is not congruous with the fervid beliefs and soaring ambitions
of eighteen. Your sense of humour, that delicate percipience of
proportion, that subrident check on impulse, that touch of the divine
fellowship with human frailty, is a thing of mellower growth. It is a
solvent and not an excitant. It does not stimulate to sublime effort;
but it can cool raging passion. It can take the salt from tears, the
bitterness from judgment, the keenness from despair; but in its
universal manifestation it would effectually stop a naval engagement.

Paul laughed. "You mustn't think I brag too much, Jane," said he. "For
anybody else I know what I say would be ridiculous. But for me it's
different. I'm going to be a great man. I know it. If I'm not going to
be a great actor, I shall be a great something else. God doesn't put
such things into people's heads for nothing. He didn't take me from the
factory in Bludston and set me here with you, walking up Regent Street,
like a gentleman, just to throw me back into the gutter."

"But who said you were going back to the gutter?" asked Jane.

"Nobody. I wanted to get right with myself. But--that getting right
with oneself--do you think it egotistic?"

"I don't quite know what that is."

He defined the term.

"No," she said seriously. "I don't think it is. Everybody has got a
self to consider. I don't look on it as ego-what-d'-you-call-it to
strike out for myself instead of going on helping mother to mind the
shop. So why should you?"

"B