you wait when I have enough
for both by your gift? What does it matter which of us it is who has the
money--you or I?' But this question went unspoken, for obvious reasons.
A woman is tongue-tied by the countless conventionalities of education.
She must often let her thoughts lie silent in her heart, though she
burns to express them, and find what answer she can to questions she
dare not offer. Philip had repaired her loss by beggaring himself. That
was noble. But now he persisted in deferring their marriage, and had
buried himself in that lofty sarcophagus in Gable Inn, resolved only to
claim her, though she was all his own already, when he had reinstated
his fortunes by his labour. That was noble also, perhaps, but in her
own heart she thought it a trifle foolish--say Quixotic, not to be too
severe. She would rather have seen his ardour find a more commonplace
expression. She had a general sort of belief that whatever Philip did
was bound to be right, and yet this actual experience rather jarred with
that assumption.

They found other themes in a while, and talked of the future and the
happiness it would bring. That Philip was going to be rich and famous
was a prime article in Patty's creed, and he himself, though he had
soberer hopes, was not likely to miss any chance of success which labour
might bring him. He was more than modest enough in his conception of his
own powers, and was often doubtful as to the fulfilment of the higher
ambitions which are the necessary fuel of all artistic fires. Without
those fires the chill of modesty will fall to the frost of cowardice,
and in Art cowardice means indolence. In his moments of exultation--and
these came generally at their strongest when he was in his sweetheart's
society--success looked easy enough. The memory of her undoubted
belief in him came upon him often with a glow reflected from those
magnificently hopeful moments. But then at times of depression it grew
to look no more than a foolish unattainable dream. All young artists
have times when they are going to be great--when the glory proper to
white hairs makes a halo round un-wrinkled fronts and curls, brown
or golden. They have times when the smartest turn of verse, the most
delightful inventions of narrative, the most exquisite contrast of
colour or mould of form their genius can compass are stricken through
and through with the horror of commonplace. But when a man of the
artistic _genus_ has once so far learned