"That is the way people talk," he said. "You have got everything by
fighting for it, and you advise me to sit still till the fruit drops
into my mouth."

"I was obliged to fight. Everything comes to you naturally--fortune,
rank--everything, including marriage. Why should you lift a hand?"

"A man cannot possibly be happy who marries before he is thirty years
old," answered Orsino with conviction. "How do you expect me to occupy
myself during the next ten years?"

"That is true," Gouache replied, somewhat thoughtfully, as though the
consideration had not struck him.

"If I were an artist, it would be different."

"Oh, very different. I agree with you." Anastase smiled good-humouredly.

"Because I should have talent--and a talent is an occupation in itself."

"I daresay you would have talent," Gouache answered, still laughing.

"No--I did not mean it in that way--I mean that when a man has a talent
it makes him think of something besides himself."

"I fancy there is more truth in that remark than either you or I would
at first think," said the painter in a meditative tone.

"Of course there is," returned the youthful philosopher, with more
enthusiasm than he would have cared to show if he had been talking to a