a that a man's surroundings were a very fair index
to his character and tastes, quite forgetting that it implied length of
purse as well.

He made spasmodic attempts at literary work. Abstruse essays were begun
under the impression that he had something brilliant and original to
say, but before they were finished a new train of thought led him
captive. He dreamed delicately sensuous dreams, lapped in luxurious
idleness, the rooms stifling with odorous hot-house flowers. He went
clothed in soft raiment, he sunned himself in languid seas of
imagination, and was too indifferent to concentrate his powers upon any
great faith or belief, or even emotion. He had a contempt for cheap and
plain belongings, as leaning insensibly to vitiation of taste. Nothing
modern met his approbation. The old-time philosophies won him with their
subtile flavor. He could propound his theories eloquently, but they did
not touch him deeply enough to rouse him into action of any kind. All
that his education and culture had done for him so far was to develop an
incapacity for any regular, wholesome work that would be of the
slightest use to any human being.

Something of this passed through Sylvie's mind as she sat there. This
handsome and stalwart lily of the valley, with no desire for toiling,
and no ability for spinning, would be content to drift and dawdle
through life on his father's money. At that moment he was more
contemptible to her than Irene, winning lovers by the score, and casting
them aside with no more compunction than if they were the litter of
faded flowers.

After all, why should she care if he did not reach her standard of moral
and intellectual excellence, of that knightly chivalry whose
rallying-cry was, "God and my fellow-men!" Why should she desire to
rouse him from that complacent ease and fastidiousness, brought about
by wealth, and the certainty of no need of effort on his part? Surely
she was no modern apostle carrying around the watchword of work.

Yet somehow--if all the subtile forces running to waste in both him and
Jack could be galvanized into earnest, active life; if the sturdy,
wholesome thought of the one could be mated with the clear, crisp
training of the other; if both could have the wide outlook beyond
material wants and comforts! It fretted her.

Yet these two, sitting here on this peerless summer day, skimmed over
wide fields like gay butterflies. She could not be in earnest with him.
Just when she was