temperament to make any woman consistently happy. Miss Callaghan is the
daughter of an Irish doctor, and a Catholic."

"It is," said Hilary, "the most beautiful of all the religions. If
I could bring myself under the yoke of any creed at all ..."

"Just so," said his uncle, who was a disagreeable man; "but you can't,"
and Hilary tolerantly left it at that, merely adding, "There will be no
difficulty. We have arranged all that. Peggy is not a bigot. As to the
rest, I think we must judge for ourselves. I shall be earning more now,
I imagine."

Hilary always imagined that; imagination was his strong point. His
initial mistake was to imagine that he could paint. He did not think that
he had yet painted anything very good; but he knew that he was just about
to do so. He had really the artist's eye, and saw keenly the beauty that
was, though he did not know it, beyond his grasp. His uncle, who knew
nothing about art, could have told him that he would never be able to
paint, simply because he had never been, and would never be, able to
work. That gift he wholly lacked. Besides, like young Peter, he seemed
constitutionally incapable of success. A wide and quick receptiveness,
a considerable power of appreciation and assimilation, made such genius
as they had; the power of performance they desperately lacked; their
enterprises always let them through. Failure was the tragi-comic note
of their unprosperous careers.

However, Hilary succeeded in achieving marriage with the cheerful Peggy
Callaghan, and having done so they went abroad and lived an uneven and
rather exciting life of alternate squalor and luxury in one story of what
had once been a glorious roseate home of Venetian counts, and was now