“Do you read them—really?” he asked, laying down the proofs on Paul’s enquiring of him how soon the work would be published. And when the young man answered “Oh yes, always,” he was moved to mirth again by something he caught in his manner of saying that. “You go to see your grandmother on her birthday—and very proper it is, especially as she won’t last for ever. She has lost every faculty and every sense; she neither sees, nor hears, nor speaks; but all customary pieties and kindly habits are respectable. Only you’re strong if you _do_ read ’em! _I_ couldn’t, my dear fellow. You are strong, I know; and that’s just a part of what I wanted to say to you. You’re very strong indeed. I’ve been going into your other things—they’ve interested me immensely. Some one ought to have told me about them before—some one I could believe. But whom can one believe? You’re wonderfully on the right road—it’s awfully decent work. Now do you mean to keep it up?—that’s what I want to ask you.” “Do I mean to do others?” Paul asked, looking up from his sofa at his erect inquisitor and feeling partly like a happy little boy when the school-master is gay, and partly like some pilgrim of old who might have consulted a world-famous oracle. St. George’s own performance had been infirm, but as an adviser he would be infallible. “Others—others? Ah the number won’t matter; one other would do, if it were really a further step—a throb of the same effort. What I mean is have you it in your heart to go in for some sort of decent perfection?” “Ah decency, ah perfection—!” the young man sincerely sighed. “I talked of them the other Sunday with Miss Fancourt.” It produced on the Master’s part a laugh of odd acrimony. “Yes, they’ll ‘talk’ of them as much as you like! But they’ll do little to help one to them. There’s no obligation of course; only you strike me as capable,” he went on. “You must have thought it all over. I can’t believe you’re without a plan. That’s the sensation you give me, and it’s so rare that it really stirs one up—it makes you remarkable. If you haven’t a plan, if you _don’t_ mean to keep it up, surely you’re within your rights; it’s nobody’s business, no one can force you, and not more than two or three people will notice you don’t go straight. The others—_all_ the rest, every blest soul in England, will think you do—will think you are keeping it up: upon my honour they will! I shall be one of the two or three who know better. Now the question is whether you can do it for two or three. Is that the stuff you’re made of?” It locked his guest a minute as in closed throbbing arms. “I could do it for one, if you were the one.”