"If I understood you aright, Mr. Thorburn, your object in residing here was to enable you to lay in such a stock of knowledge as would enable you to contest for fame with a good promise of success?" I nodded. "You even went, Sir, to the expense of furnishing this house, that you might burden yourself with obligations which should not be got rid of without inconvenience and loss." "True." "That you did, that your resolution, should it grow impaired by fatigue or caprice, would still be hampered with difficulties enough to make its decay slow or even impossible." "Well?" said I, wondering at his solemnity and long preamble. "Is it possible, Sir, I ask respectfully, that you will abandon your large and dignified enterprise for a lady of whom you know nothing?" "You only make me sensible of the capriciousness of my character," I answered, laughing; "but you could not shake the love this lady has inspired." "Sir," he said courteously, "nothing would justify the freedom of my language but the knowledge that one of the duties you desired me to discharge, was to stimulate your energies when I found them flagging. But as you have determined to alter your views, I shall of course consider those duties at an end." "Why?" I asked. "What avenues in life would be closed to me as a married man that are opened to me as a bachelor? A man is not bound to be idle, is not prohibited from meditating as ambitiously as he chooses, because he gives his name to a woman." "I do not say, Sir, that you may not recur hereafter to your schemes; but you may reckon on being very indisposed for study for a good time now. This lady will occupy your thoughts to the exclusion of all things else, before marriage and for long after. Love-making is an absorbing occupation. To a poor man it may be a stimulus, for he may have to work in order to wed; but to a rich man it is usually a soporific." "My good friend," I exclaimed, "you speak as though my marriage were a fixed matter. Let us look at the truth. I am in love with this lady, it is true--but she is not in love with me. I may have to be importunate to procure her consent--should she ever vouchsafe her consent, which, between you and me, I have no earthly reason to suppose likely; and importunities, to be successful, must be often delayed and never vehement. I should regret your leaving me; and should regret it the more if you resolve to go before my future takes a more definite character. My wishes will of course impel me to bring this love of mine to an issue as speedily as she will let me; but I really like your company too well to wish you to regulate your conduct by a contingency which, I fear, may prove the reverse of inevitable." He paced the room, eyeing me from time to time with a gaze uncertain and agitated. His brow was clouded.