“Ah, Mademoiselle, do not misrepresent me. I did not say that I could not sometimes quit the real world for fairyland,--I said that I could not do so often. My vocation is not that of a poet or artist.” “It is that of an orator, I know,” said Isaura, kindling; “so they tell me, and I believe them. But is not the orator somewhat akin to the poet? Is not oratory an art?” “Let us dismiss the word orator; as applied to English public life, it is a very deceptive expression. The Englishman who wishes to influence his countrymen by force of words spoken must mix with them in their beaten thoroughfares; must make himself master of their practical views and interests; must be conversant with their prosaic occupations and business; must understand how to adjust their loftiest aspirations to their material welfare; must avoid as the fault most dangerous to himself and to others that kind of eloquence which is called oratory in France, and which has helped to make the French the worst politicians in Europe. Alas! Mademoiselle, I fear that an English statesman would appear to you a very dull orator.” “I see that I spoke foolishly,--yes, you show me that the world of the statesman lies apart from that of the artist. Yet--” “Yet what?” “May not the ambition of both be the same?” “How so?” “To refine the rude, to exalt the mean; to identify their own fame with some new beauty, some new glory, added to the treasure-house of all.” Graham bowed his head reverently, and then raised it with the flush of enthusiasm on his cheek and brow. “Oh, Mademoiselle,” he exclaimed, “what a sure guide and what a noble inspirer to a true Englishman’s ambition nature has fitted you to be, were it not--” He paused abruptly. This outburst took Isaura utterly by surprise. She had been accustomed to the language of compliment till it had begun to pall, but a compliment of this kind was the first that had ever reached her ear. She had no words in answer to it; involuntarily she placed her hand on her heart as if to still its beatings. But the unfinished exclamation, “Were it not,” troubled her more than the preceding words had flattered, and mechanically she murmured, “Were it not--what?” “Oh,” answered Graham, affecting a tone of gayety, “I felt too ashamed of my selfishness as man to finish my sentence.” “Do so, or I shall fancy you refrained lest you might wound me as woman.”