"To be on the right side--on the side of the 'fine.'" "There'll be precious little of the 'fine' if I produce nothing but daubs." "Ah you cling to the old false measure of success! I must cure you of that. There'll be the beauty of having been disinterested and independent; of having taken the world in the free, brave, personal way." "I shall nevertheless paint decently if I can," Nick presently said. "I'm almost sorry! It will make your case less clear, your example less grand." "My example will be grand enough, with the fight I shall have to make." "The fight? With whom?" "With myself first of all. I'm awfully against it." "Ah but you'll have me on the other side," Nash smiled. "Well, you'll have more than a handful to meet--everything, every one that belongs to me, that touches me near or far; my family, my blood, my heredity, my traditions, my promises, my circumstances, my prejudices; my little past--such as it is; my great future--such as it has been supposed it may be." "I see, I see. It's splendid!" Nash exclaimed. "And Mrs. Dallow into the bargain," he added. "Yes, Mrs. Dallow if you like." "Are you in love with her?" "Not in the least." "Well, she is with you--so I understood." "Don't say that," said Nick Dormer with sudden sternness. "Ah you are, you are!" his companion pronounced, judging apparently from this accent. "I don't know _what_ I am--heaven help me!" Nick broke out, tossing his hat down on his little tin table with vehemence. "I'm a freak of nature and a sport of the mocking gods. Why should they go out of their way to worry me? Why should they do everything so inconsequent, so improbable, so preposterous? It's the vulgarest practical joke. There has never been anything of the sort among us; we're all Philistines to the core, with about as much esthetic sense as that hat. It's excellent soil--I don't complain of it--but not a soil to grow that flower. From where the devil then has the seed been dropped? I look back from generation to generation; I scour our annals without finding the least little sketching grandmother, any sign of a building or versifying or collecting or even tulip-raising ancestor. They were all as blind as bats, and none the less happy for that. I'm a wanton variation, an unaccountable monster. My dear father, rest his soul, went through life without a suspicion that there's anything in it that can't be boiled into blue-books, and became in that conviction a very distinguished person. He brought me up in the same simplicity and in the hope of the same eminence. It would have been better if I had remained so. I think it's partly your fault that I haven't," Nick went on. "At Oxford you were very bad company for me--my evil genius: you opened my eyes, you communicated the poison. Since then, little by little, it has been working within me; vaguely, covertly, insensibly at first, but during the last year or two with violence, pertinacity, cruelty. I've resorted