A man who had crossed the wide ocean as that Ulysses of whom he read to her, and who, like that Ulysses, enjoyed immense physical strength, why was he like this? Why was he so poor? Why did he work in the rain under a sack? Why did he gossip at the stile with the small-brained hamlet idlers? It puzzled her and hurt her at the same time. I cannot explain why it was so, any better than Amaryllis; I could give a hundred reasons, and then there would be no explanation--say partly circumstances, partly lack of a profession in which talent would tell, partly an indecision of character--too much thought--and, after all said and done, Fate. Watching him from the network window, Amaryllis felt her heart drooping, she knew not why, and went back to her drawing unstrung. She worked very hard, and worked in vain. The sketches all came back to her. Some of them had a torn hole at the corner where they had been carelessly filed, others a thumb-mark, others had been folded wrongly, almost all smelt of tobacco. Neither illustrated papers, periodicals: neither editors nor publishers would have anything to do with them. One or two took more care, and returned the drawings quite clean; one sent a note saying that they promised well. Poor Amaryllis! They promised well, and she wanted half a sovereign _now_. If a prophet assured a man that the picture he could not now dispose of would be worth a thousand pounds in fifty years, what consolation would that be to him? They were all a total failure. So many letters could not be received in that dull place without others in the house seeing what was going on. Once now and then Amaryllis heard a step on the stairs--a shuffling, uncertain step--and her heart began to beat quicker, for she knew it was her mother. Somehow, although she loved her so dearly, she felt that there was not much sympathy between them. She did not understand her mother; the mother did not understand the daughter. Though she was working for her mother's sake, when she heard her mother's step she was ashamed of her work. Mrs. Iden would come in and shuffle round the room, drawing one foot along the floor in an aggravating way she had, she was not lame, and look out of window, and presently stand behind Amaryllis, and say-- "Ah! you'll never do anything at that. Never do anything. I've seen too much of it. Better come down and warm yourself." Now this annoyed Amaryllis so much because it seemed so inconsistent. Mrs. Iden blew up her husband for having no enterprise, and then turned round and discouraged her daughter for being enterprising, and this, too, although she was constantly talking about the superiority of the art employments of the Flammas in London to the clodhopper work around her. Amaryllis could never draw a line till her mother had gone downstairs again, and then the words kept repeating themselves in her ear--"Never do no good at that, never do no good at that."