"My dear boy," she said, wonderingly, "I never heard anything so romantic and impossible. Of course it is the American cousin with whom you have been shut up all these weeks that has been putting such preposterous ideas into your head. I always said that nature just missed making you a poet. But if you wish to work out your manifest destiny--to be immortalized in history--you will remind yourself that England is the one place on earth where an Anglo-Saxon can cut a really great figure. Not only because he has the proper background of traditions, but because he has an audience trained to recognize a man's greatness during his lifetime. If you go in for those unspeakable American politics you will never be given credit for anything higher than your medium; in other words, should you develop into a statesman on American lines you would never be recognized for anything but a successful politician. Even if you survived in their hurly-burly of history, you would be judged by contemporary standards--infused with a certain contempt because you were not American-born." "I have thought it all out. The obstacles to greatness, even more than to success, have whetted my appetite for the struggle. I must fight! fight! fight! I must exercise my powers of usefulness to some good end, and now, now, when I am young and ardent. I should go mad sitting round doing nothing. I have no temper for attacking the passive resistance of inertia. I want to fight out in the open. If I fail I will take my beating like a man. But I have not the least intention of failing. I am acutely aware of the powers within me, and I can use them anywhere." "Then why not in the Upper House?" she asked, quickly. "For the reasons I have given you, and because I should fear the results on my character. You know what it means to be a peer of Great Britain. Flattery without accomplishment is demoralizing--would be to me, at all events. It is wine to me when I am achieving, but it would drug me in idleness. Are you so wedded to London?" "London is the _raison d'etre_ of life. Has it occurred to you," she asked, gently, "that I might refuse to go to America?" "I was afraid the idea would be something of a shock, but I was sure you would see the matter in my light." "It is not wanting in power! But it seems that I am. I have never aspired to the role of Amelia Sedley. I have, in fact, rather a pronounced individuality; and yet you have taken upon yourself to dispose of my future as if I were a slip of eighteen--delighted at the prospect of a husband." "Indeed you are wrong!" he cried, distressed to have bruised so beloved an ego. "But, I repeat, it was a question I was forced to decide alone. Nor would it have been fair to ask you to assume any part of so great a responsibility. Do you suppose I did not think of that? Do you suppose I have ever lost sight of your happiness? Let me think for both and you shall not regret it."