,
was really inspiring. 'Ah, if only I had the money,' he sighed.

'But you wouldn't care to live in the country?' said Althea.

'There's nowhere else I really care to live. Nothing would please me so
much as to spend the rest of my life at Merriston, dabbling at my
painting and going in seriously for farming.'

'Why don't you do it?'

'Why, money! I've got no money. It's expensive work to educate oneself
by experience, and I'm ignorant. You show me how ignorant. No; I'm
afraid I'm to go on drifting, and never lead the life I best like.'

Althea was silent. She hardly knew what she was feeling, but it pressed
upon her so, that she was afraid lest a breath would stir some
consciousness in him. She had money, a good deal. What a pity that he
had none.

'Now you,' Gerald went on, 'have all sorts of big, wise plans for life,
I've no doubt. It would interest me to hear about them.'

'No; I drift too,' said Althea.

'You can't call it drifting when you read and study such a lot.'

'Oh yes, I can, when there is no real aim in the work. You should hear
Mr. Kane scold me about that.'

Gerald was not interested in Mr. Kane. 'I should think, after all you've
done, you might rest on your oars for a bit,' he remarked. 'It's quite
enough, I should think, for a woman to know so much. If you liked to do
anything, you'd do it awfully well, I'm sure.'

Ah, what would she not like to do! Help you to steer to any port you
wanted was the half-articulate cry of her heart.

'She really is an interesting little person, your Althea,' Gerald said
to Helen. 'You were wrong not to find her interesting. She is so wise
and calm and she knows such a lot.'

'I'm too ignorant to be interested in knowledge,' said Helen.

'It's not mere knowledge, it's the gentle temperateness and independence
one feels in her.'

Helen, somehow, did not feel them, or, at all events, felt other
things too much to feel them preeminently. It was part of her
unselfconsciousness not to guess why Althea's relation to her had
slightly changed. She could hardly have followed with comprehension the
suffering instability of her friend's character, nor dream that her own
power over her was so great, yet so resented; but something in their
talk about Mr. Kane had made Helen uncomfortable, and she said no more
now, not wishing to emphasise any negative aspect of her attitude to
Althea at a time when their relation seemed to have become a little
strained. And she wa