Page:Imre.pdf/96

94 with no training for so much as digging a ditch? Do you wish to become a dance-music strummer in the Városliget? Or a second-class acrobat in the Circus Wulff? Or will you throw off your uniform, to take flight to Americia... Australia... to be a riding-master or a waiter in a restaurant, or a vagabond, like some of the Habsburg arch-dukes? Imre, Imre! Instead be... a man! I man in this, as in all else. You trifle with your certainty of a career. Be a man in this matter?"

He sighed. Then softly, with a strange despair of life in his tone:

"Be a man? In this, as in all? God! how I wish I could be so."

"Wish you could be so! I don't know what you mean. A manlier fellow one need not be! Only this damnable neglect of your career! You surely wish to succeed in life?"

"I wish. But I cannot will..... Do not talk any more about it just now. You can... teremtette! you will write me quite enough about it. You are exactly like Karvaly, once that topic comes into your mind! Yes, like