his soul."

She paused a little, and I for my part could not help staring at her,
and thinking that if she were a book, the pictures in it were most
lovely. The colour mantled in her delicate sunburnt cheeks; her grey
eyes, light amidst the tan of her face, kindly looked on us all as
she spoke. She paused, and said again:

"As for your books, they were well enough for times when intelligent
people had but little else in which they could take pleasure, and
when they must needs supplement the sordid miseries of their own
lives with imaginations of the lives of other people. But I say
flatly that in spite of all their cleverness and vigour, and capacity
for story-telling, there is something loathsome about them. Some of
them, indeed, do here and there show some feeling for those whom the
history-books call 'poor,' and of the misery of whose lives we have
some inkling; but presently they give it up, and towards the end of
the story we must be contented to see the hero and heroine living
happily in an island of bliss on other people's troubles; and that
after a long series of sham troubles (or mostly sham) of their own
making, illustrated by dreary introspective nonsense about their
feelings and aspirations, and all the rest of it; while the world
must even then have gone on its way, and dug and sewed and baked and
built and carpentered round about these useless--animals."

"There!" said the old man, reverting to his dry sulky manner again.
"There's eloquence! I suppose you like it?"

"Yes," said I, very emphatically.