Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 2.djvu/21

Rh she had thrown herself personally into his life. She had by her act made him live twice as much, and such a service, if a man had accepted and deeply tasted it, was certainly a thing to put him on his honour. Nick gladly recognized that there was nothing he could do in preference that would not be spoiled for him by any deflection from that point. His mother had made him uncomfortable by intimating to him that Julia was in love with him (he didn't like, in general, to be told such things); but the responsibility seemed easier to carry and he was less shy about it when once he was away from other eyes, with only Julia's own to express that truth and with indifferent nature all around. Besides, what discovery had he made this morning but that he also was in love?

"You must be a very great man," she said to him, in the middle of the lake. "I don't know what you mean about my salon; but I am ambitious."

"We must look at life in a large, bold way," Nick replied, resting his oars.

"That's what I mean. If I didn't think you could I wouldn't look at you."

"I could what?"

"Do everything you ought—everything I imagine, I dream of. You are clever: you can never make me believe the contrary, after your speech on Tuesday. Don't speak to me! I've seen, I've heard and I know what's in you. I shall hold you to it. You are everything that you pretend not to be."

Nick sat looking at the water while she talked. "Will it always be so amusing?" he asked.

"Will what always be?"