Page:The Sense of the Past (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/43

 you in fine that if he isn't good enough your idea itself perhaps isn't." Now that Ralph was launched he felt the tide high. "That's what it comes to, your idea, dress it up as you will. You want a fellow only who shall have had adventures—and that, I hasten to grant, is any lady's right. There's no disputing about tastes, but that isn't true about principles. You want the adventure to have been, or necessarily to be, of the species most marked and determined by our climate, our geographical position, our political institutions, our social circumstances and our national character. It seems to me you see lines drawn remarkably sharp, but, allowing you that, I repeat that you strike me as having but to take your choice. The cow-boy," he suggested, "of middle-age, say"

But she had now interrupted—as if for commiseration. "I don't even yet know what a cowboy is!"

It was at all events her seeing him gracelessly astray that she made him most feel. "There am I for you then. I don't know what anyone is who leads the life of action—so little am I such a creature myself." And straight—though he was sore for it—he looked the whole thing in the face. "It's my type itself that's impossible to you. I shouldn't even here," he averred, "be able to meet your views or do what you require. I'd be a brute for it if I could—as indeed I often wish I 29