"Yes, as soon as I can. As soon as I can, I'm going to get into the law. When Weston first began urging me to keep up my studies, and when finally he made me go to the night law school, I consented chiefly because I had always felt the chagrin of defeat in having been compelled to give it up; lately, I've begun to see things differently, and I've determined to carry out my first intention and get into the law somehow. Of course, it's going to be hard. And one has to have a pull there as everywhere else in these days." Marley was silent for a moment and, Lavinia thought, a little depressed. She watched him sympathetically, and yet she was a little troubled by a sense of detachment. She felt that Weston was now more closely associated with Marley's struggle than she, and she was disturbed, too, by the disappointment of finding that his struggles were not at all ended. "Weston says," Marley went on presently, "that newspaper work is a good stepping-stone, and by it I may be able to arrange for some place in the law which will give me the start I want." "I thought you liked your work," Lavinia said; "I thought you were happy in it." Marley detected her regret, and was on the point of speaking, when Lavinia went on: "I don't see why you can't go into literature as well as Mr. Weston." Marley laughed. "The reason is that I haven't his talent," he said "I don't see why," Lavinia argued with some resentment of his humility. "You haven't enough confidence in your own powers; you let Mr. Weston dominate you too much." "Now, dearest," he pleaded, "you mustn't do Jim that injustice. He doesn't dominate me; but he is so much wiser than I, he knows so much more. You will understand when you meet him." "Well," she tentatively admitted, "that is no reason why you shouldn't in time be a literary man as well as he. Why can't you?" "Because I can't write, that's why." "Why, Glenn, how can you say that? Your letters disprove that. Every one who read them said that they were remarkable, and that you should go into literature. They said you had such good descriptive powers." Marley was looking at her in amazement. "Why, Lavinia, you didn't show them!" "You simpleton!" she said, with a smile in her eyes, "of course not; but I have read parts of them to mama and to your mother now and then." "Oh, well, that's all right," sighed Marley in relief, and then he resumed his defense of Weston and his analysis of himself. "Of course, I suppose I can write a fairly good newspaper story; at least they say so at the office." He indulged a little look of pride, and then he went on: "But that isn't literature." "I don't see why it isn't," she said. "I should think it would be the most natural thing in the world to go from one into the other." "Not at all. Literature requires style, personality, distinction, and the artistic temperament." "I'd say you were talking now like George Halliday if I didn't know you were talking like Mr. Weston."