e as literary material There
are people who will tell me that this is a poor way of feeling it, and
I am not concerned to defend my statement, having space merely to remark
that there is something to be said for any interest which makes a man
feel so much. If Mark Ambient did really, as I suggested above, have
imaginative contact with "all life," I, for my part, envy him his
_arriere-pensee_. At any rate it was through the receipt of this
impression of him that by the time we returned I had acquired the
feeling of intimacy I have noted. Before we got up for the homeward
stretch, he alluded to his wife's having once--or perhaps more than
once--asked him whether he should like Dolcino to read _Beltraffio_.
I think he was unconscious at the moment of all that this conveyed to
me--as well, doubtless, of my extreme curiosity to hear what he had
replied. He had said that he hoped very much Dolcino would read all his
works--when he was twenty; he should like him to know what his father
had done. Before twenty it would be useless; he would n't understand
them.

"And meanwhile do you propose to hide them,--to lock them up in a
drawer?" Mrs. Ambient had inquired.

"Oh, no; we must simply tell him that they are not intended for small
boys. If you bring him up properly, after that he won t touch them."

To this Mrs. Ambient had made answer that it would be very awkward when
he was about fifteen; and I asked her husband if it was his opinion in
general, then, that young people should not read novels.

"Good ones--certainly not!" said my companion. I suppose I had had other
views, for I remember saying that, for myself, I was not sure it was bad
for them, if the novels were "good" enough. "Bad for _them_, I don't say
so much!" Ambient exclaimed. "But very bad, I am afraid, for the novel!"
That oblique, accidental allusion to his wife's attitude was followed by
a franker style of reference as we walked home. "The difference between
us is simply the opposition between two distinct ways of looking at the
world, which have never succeeded in getting on together, or making any
kind of common menage, since the beginning of time. They have borne all
sorts of names, and my wife would tell you it's the difference between
Christian and Pagan. I may be a pagan, but I don't like the name; it
sounds sectarian. She thinks me, at any rate, no better than an ancient
Greek. It's the difference between making the most of life and making
the least,