ertain. It may be another ten years before I can count
on an income of five or six hundred pounds--if I have to struggle on in
the common way.'

'But tell me, what is your aim in life? What do you understand by
success?'

'Yes, I will tell you. My aim is to have easy command of all the
pleasures desired by a cultivated man. I want to live among beautiful
things, and never to be troubled by a thought of vulgar difficulties.
I want to travel and enrich my mind in foreign countries. I want to
associate on equal terms with refined and interesting people. I want to
be known, to be familiarly referred to, to feel when I enter a room that
people regard me with some curiosity.'

He looked steadily at her with bright eyes.

'And that's all?' asked Marian.

'That is very much. Perhaps you don't know how I suffer in feeling
myself at a disadvantage. My instincts are strongly social, yet I can't
be at my ease in society, simply because I can't do justice to myself.
Want of money makes me the inferior of the people I talk with, though
I might be superior to them in most things. I am ignorant in many
ways, and merely because I am poor. Imagine my never having been out of
England! It shames me when people talk familiarly of the Continent. So
with regard to all manner of amusements and pursuits at home. Impossible
for me to appear among my acquaintances at the theatre, at concerts.
I am perpetually at a disadvantage; I haven't fair play. Suppose me
possessed of money enough to live a full and active life for the next
five years; why, at the end of that time my position would be secure. To
him that hath shall be given--you know how universally true that is.'

'And yet,' came in a low voice from Marian, 'you say that you love me.'

'You mean that I speak as if no such thing as love existed. But you
asked me what I understood by success. I am speaking of worldly things.
Now suppose I had said to you:

My one aim and desire in life is to win your love. Could you have
believed me? Such phrases are always untrue; I don't know how it
can give anyone pleasure to hear them. But if I say to you: All the
satisfactions I have described would be immensely heightened if they
were shared with a woman who loved me--there is the simple truth.'

Marian's heart sank. She did not want truth such as this; she would have
preferred that he should utter the poor, common falsehoods. Hungry for
passionate love, she heard with a sense of desolation all