Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/177

Rh air of being embarrassed to choose between several answers, any one of them would be so right. "Oh, having something to show is such a poor business. It's a kind of confession of failure."

"Yes, you're more affected than anything else," said Nick, impatiently.

"No, my dear boy, I'm more good-natured: don't I prove it? I'm rather disappointed to find that you are not worthy of the esoteric doctrine. But there is, I confess, another plane of intelligence, honourable, and very honourable in its way, from which may legitimately appear important to have something to show. If you must confine yourself to that plane I won't refuse you my sympathy. After all, that's what I have to show! But the degree of my sympathy must of course depend on the nature of the manifestation that you wish to make."

"You know it very well—you've guessed it," Nick rejoined, looking before him in a conscious, modest way which, if he had been a few years younger, would have been called sheepish.

"Ah, you've broken the scent with telling me you are going to return to the House of Commons," said Nash.

"No wonder you don't make it out! My situation is certainly absurd enough. What I really want to do is to be a painter. That's the abject, crude, ridiculous fact. In this out-of-the-way corner, at the dead of night, in lowered tones, I venture to disclose it to you. Isn't that the æsthetic life?"

"Do you know how to paint?" asked Nash.

"Not in the least. No element of burlesque is therefore wanting to my position."

"That makes no difference. I'm so glad!"