ver!"

Stephen produced his pipe from his pocket, and slowly filled it.

"She is keeping you dangling at her heels, and giving you no sort of
answer?"

"Well, I wouldn't put it quite like that," John declared,
good-humoredly. "I asked her to marry me as soon as I came up, and we
both agreed to wait for a time. You see, her life has been so
extraordinarily different from mine. I have only half understood the
things which to her are like the air she breathes. She is a great
artist, and I scarcely ever leave her without feeling appallingly
ignorant. Our life down in Cumberland, Stephen, is well enough in its
way, but it leaves us outside many of the great things of life."

"That may be true enough, boy," Stephen admitted, blowing out dense
volumes of smoke from his pipe; "but are you sure that it's toward those
great things that she is pointing you?"

"I am sure of it," John answered earnestly. "I appreciate that in my
heart. Let us talk together, Stephen, as we used. I will admit that I
have found most of the time up here wearisome. On the other hand, I am
beginning to understand that I have been, and still am, very ignorant.
There is so much in the world that one can only learn by experience."

"And what are you willing to pay for the knowledge?" Stephen asked.
"Your health, I suppose, your simple life, your love of the pure
ways--all these are to go into the melting-pot?"

"There's no such payment demanded for the things I am thinking of," John
assured his brother. "Take art, for instance: We reach the fringe of it
with our books. There are pictures, even here in London, which when you
look at them, especially with one who understands, give a new vigor to
your understanding, a new resource to living. You become conscious of a
new beauty in the world, a new garden, as it were, into which one can
wander every day and yet not explore it in a lifetime. I have seen
enough, Stephen, to make me want to go to Italy. It's a shameful thing
to keep one's brain and taste unemployed!"

"Who takes you to see the pictures?" Stephen demanded.

"Miss Maurel, generally. She understands these things better than any
one I have ever talked with."

"Pictures, eh?" Stephen grunted.

"I mentioned pictures as an example," John continued; "but the love of
them includes many other things."

"Theaters?"

"Of course," John assented. "It's no good being narrow about theaters,
Stephen. You read books readily enough, and theaters are o