great ideas. This introduction to such phases of life will prove
endlessly advantageous to me, artistically speaking. Let me get a
little more experience, and I will write a novel such as no one has
yet ventured to write, at all events in England. I begin to see my
way to magnificent effects; ye gods, such light and shade! The fact
is, the novel of every-day life is getting worn out. We must dig
deeper, get to untouched social strata. Dickens felt this, but he
had not the courage to face his subjects; his monthly numbers had to
lie on the family tea-table. Not _virginibus puerisque_ will be my
book, I assure you, but for men and women who like to look beneath
the surface, and who understand that only as artistic material has
human life any significance. Yes, that is the conclusion I am
working round to. The artist is the only sane man. Life for its own
sake?--no; I would drink a pint of laudanum to-night. But life as
the source of splendid pictures, inexhaustible material for effects
--_that_ can reconcile me to existence, and that only. It is a
delight followed by no bitter after-taste, and the only such delight
I know."

Harriet was very quiet when Julian returned. She went about getting
the tea with a sort of indifference; she let a cup fall and break,
but made no remark, and left her husband to pick up the pieces.

"Waymark thinks I'm neglecting him," said Julian, with a laugh, as
they sat down together.

"It's better to neglect him than to neglect me, I should think," was
Harriet's reply, in a quiet ill-natured tone which she was mistress
of.