it has run altogether dry because it
may for a while cease to bubble up under the blazing sun of August.
Nature, of whose laws I know so much, tells me that the water will
come again."

"Yes, water will run in its natural course. But when you have been
supplied by an artificial pipe, and have cut that off, it is probable
that you may run short."

"In such case I would say, that having a due regard to prudence, I
would not cut off that very convenient artificial pipe."

"One may pay too dear, Harcourt, even for one's water."

"As far as I am able to judge, you have had yours without paying for
it at all; and if you lose it, it will only be by your own obstinacy.
I would I had such an uncle to deal with."

"I would you had; as for me, I tell you fairly, I do not mean to deal
with him at all."

"I would I had; I should know then that everything was open to me.
Now I have everything to do for myself. I do not despair, however. As
for you, the ball is at your foot."

They talked very freely with each other as to their future hopes and
future destinies. Harcourt seemed to take it as a settled matter that
Bertram should enter himself at the bar, and Bertram did not any
longer contradict him. Since he had learnt Miss Waddington's ideas
on the subject, he expressed no further desire to go into the church,
and had, in fact, nothing serious to say in favour of any of those
other professions of which he had sometimes been accustomed to speak.
There was nothing but the bar left for him; and therefore when
Harcourt at last asked him the question plainly, he said that he
supposed that such would be his fate.

But on one subject Bertram did not speak openly to his friend. He
said not a word to him about Caroline. Harcourt was in many respects
an excellent friend; but he had hardly that softness of heart, or
that softness of expression which tempts one man to make another a
confidant in an affair of love. If Harcourt had any such affairs
himself, he said nothing of them to Bertram, and at the present time
Bertram said nothing on the subject to him. He kept that care deep in
his own bosom. He had as yet neither spoken a word nor written a word
concerning it to any one; and even when his friend had once casually
asked him whether he had met much in the way of beauty in Jerusalem,
he had felt himself to wince as though the subject were too painful
to be spoken of.

They reached London about the middle of October, and Harcourt