Monsieur Carolus. He had an idea that in this manner he kept himself in
touch with his countrymen; and he had never pitched his endeavour so
high as in leaving that card on the Misses Dosson. He was in search of
freshness, but he needn't have gone far: he would have had but to turn
his lantern on his own young breast to find a considerable store of it.
Like many of his dawdling coaevals he gave much attention to art,
lived as much as possible in that more select world where it is a
positive duty not to bustle. To make up for his want of talent he
espoused the talent of others--that is of several--and was as sensitive
and conscientious about them as he might have been about himself. He
defended certain of Waterlow's purples and greens as he would have
defended his own honour, and there was a genius or two, not yet fully
acclaimed by the vulgar, in regard to whom he had convictions that
belonged almost to the undiscussable part of life. He had not, for
himself, any very high sense of performance, but what kept it down
particularly was his untractable hand, the fact that, such as they were,
Waterlow's purples and greens, for instance, were far beyond him. If he
hadn't failed there other failures wouldn't have mattered, not even that
of not having a country; and it was on the occasion of his friend's
agreement to paint that strange lovely girl, whom he liked so much and
whose companions he didn't like, that he felt supremely without a
vocation. Freshness was in HER at least, if he had only been organised
for catching it. He prayed earnestly, in relation to such a triumph, for
a providential re-enforcement of Waterlow's sense of that source of
charm. If Waterlow had a fault it was that his freshnesses were
sometimes too crude.

He avenged himself for the artist's profanation of his first attempt to
approach Miss Francie by indulging at the end of another week in a
second. He went about six o'clock, when he supposed she would have