“Let us sit down and talk about yourself quite dispassionately, as if you were somebody else.” She resumed the chair--Leonard’s own chair--beside the table; it was a revolving chair, and she turned it half round so that her elbow rested on the blotting-pad, while she faced her suitor. Leonard for his part experienced the old feeling of standing up before the Head for a little wholesome criticism. He laughed, however, and obeyed, taking the easy-chair at his side of the fireplace. This gave Constance the slight superiority of talking down to instead of up to him. A tall man very often forgets the advantage of his stature. “I mean, if companionship were necessary for you. It is, I believe, to weaker and to less fortunate men--to poets, I suppose. Love means, I am sure, a craving for support and sympathy. Some men--weaker men than you--require sympathy as much as women. You do not feel that desire--or need.” “A terrible charge. But how do you know?” “I know because I have thought a great deal about you, and because I have conceived so deep a regard for you that, at first, when I received your letter I almost--almost--made a great mistake.” “Well--but tell me something more. To learn how one is estimated may be very good for one. Self-conceit is an ever-present danger.” “I think, to begin with, that of all young men that I know you are the most self-reliant and the most confident.” “Well, these are virtues, are they not?” “Of course, you have every right to be self-reliant. You are a good scholar, and you have been regarded at the University as one of the coming men. You are actually already one of the men who are looked upon as arrived. So far you have justified your self-confidence.” “So far my vanity is not wounded. But there is more.” “Yes. You are also the most fortunate of young men. You are miles ahead of your contemporaries, because where they all lack something you lack nothing. One man wants birth--it takes a very strong man to get over a humble origin: another man wants manner: another has an unfortunate face--a harsh voice--a nervous jerkiness: another is deficient in style: another is ground down by poverty. You alone have not one single defect to stand in your way.” “Let me be grateful, then.” “You have that very, very rare combination of qualities which make the successful statesman. You are good-looking: you are even handsome: you look important: you have a good voice and a good manner as well as a good presence: you are a gentleman by birth and training: you have enough to live upon now: and you are the heir to a good estate. Really, Leonard, I do not know what else you could ask of fortune.” “I have never asked anything of fortune.” “And you get everything. You are too fortunate, Leonard. There must be something behind--something to come. Nature makes no man perfectly happy.” “Indeed!” He smiled gravely. “I want nothing of that kind.”