MORLEY. A thousand thanks; so it is to be mine, is it?

MRS. G. I wanted to say, Mr. Morley, how good I think you have always been
to me.

MORLEY. I, dear lady? I?

MRS. G. I must so often have been in the way without knowing it. You see,
you and I think differently. We belong to different schools.

MORLEY. If you go on, I shall have to say "angel," again. That is all I
_can_ say.

MRS. G. (_tremulously_). Oh, Mr. Morley, you will tell me! Is this
the end? Has he--has he, after all, been a failure?

MORLEY. My dear lady, he has been an epoch.

MRS. G. Aren't epochs failures, sometimes?

MORLEY. Even so, they count; we have to reckon with them. No, he is no
failure; though it may seem like it just now. Don't pay too much attention
to what the papers will say. He doesn't, though he reads them. Look at him
now!--does that look like failure?

(_He points to the exuberantly energetic figure intensely absorbed in
its game_.)

MRS. G. He is putting it on to-night a little, for _me_, Mr. Morley.
He knows I am watching him. Tell me how he seemed when he first spoke to