He didn't persuade his sister, who despised him--she wished to work
her mother in her own way, and I asked myself why the girl's judgment
of him didn't make me like her better. It was because it didn't save
her after all from a mute agreement with him to go halves. There
were moments when I couldn't help looking hard into his atrocious
young eyes, challenging him to confess his fantastic fraud and give
it up. Not a little tacit conversation passed between us in this
way, but he had always the best of it. If I said: "Oh, come now,
with ME you needn't keep it up; plead guilty, and I'll let you off,"
he wore the most ingenuous, the most candid expression, in the depths
of which I could read: "Oh, yes, I know it exasperates you--that's
just why I do it." He took the line of earnest inquiry, talked about
Balzac and Flaubert, asked me if I thought Dickens DID exaggerate and
Thackeray OUGHT to be called a pessimist. Once he came to see me, at
his mother's suggestion he declared, on purpose to ask me how far, in
my opinion, in the English novel, one really might venture to "go."
He was not resigned to the usual pruderies--he suffered under them
already. He struck out the brilliant idea that nobody knew how far
we might go, for nobody had ever tried. Did I think HE might safely
try--would it injure his mother if he did? He would rather disgrace
himself by his timidities than injure his mother, but certainly some
one ought to try. Wouldn't _I_ try--couldn't I be prevailed upon to
look at it as a duty? Surely the ultimate point ought to be fixed--
he was worried, haunted by the question. He patronised me
unblushingly, made me feel like a foolish amateur, a helpless novice,
inquired into my habits of work and conveyed to me that I was utterly
vieux jeu and had not had the advantage of an early training. I had
not been brought up from the germ, I knew nothing of life--didn't go
at it on HIS system. He had dipped into French feuilletons and
picked up plenty of phrases, and he made a much better show in talk