your English masters, they all come from him. Perhaps, most of all,
your ---- But you shall tell me when you have read it. You shall tell me
whom most you seem to see there. Your Meredith? Your Shaw? Your ---- But
you shall tell me."

"I will tell you," I said faintly.

And I've got to tell him.

Don't think that I shall have any difficulty in reading the book.
Glancing through it just now I came across this:--

"'_Kate, avez-vous soupé avant le spectacle_?'

'_Non, je n'avais guère le coeur à manger_.'"

Well, that's easy enough. But I doubt if it is one of the most
characteristic passages. It doesn't give you a clue to Laforgue's manner,
any more than "'Must I sit here, mother?' 'Yes, without a doubt you
must,'" tells you all that you want to know about Meredith. There's more
in it than that.

And I've got to tell him.

But fancy holding forth on an author's style after reading him
laboriously with a dictionary!

However, I must do my best; and in my more hopeful moments I see the
conversation going like this:--