"Yes; a trifle fussy and self-conscious, though. I should prefer a
society more reposeful. From this, again, I would go to the life of the
streets and byways of the city. And then, for the fourth phase, to the
direct contemplation of art--music, architecture, sculpture,
painting;--to haunting the great galleries, especially of Italy,
studying and copying the old masters. I have no desire to originate. I
should be satisfied, in the arts, rather to receive than to give; to be
audience and spectator; to contemplate and admire."

"Well, I hope you may have your wish yet," was all that Larcher
could say.

"I _should_ like to have just one whack at life before I finish,"
replied Davenport, gazing thoughtfully into the shadow beyond the
lamplight. "Just one taste of comparative happiness."

"Haven't you ever had even one?"

"I thought I had, for a brief season, but I was deceived." (Larcher
remembered the talk of an inconstant woman.) "No, I have never been
anything like happy. My father was a cold man who chilled all around
him. He died when I was a boy, and left my mother and me to poverty. My
mother loved me well enough; she taught me music, encouraged my
studies, and persuaded a distant relation to send me to the College of
Medicine and Surgery; but her life was darkened by grief, and the
darkness fell over me, too. When she died, my relation dropped me, and
I undertook to make a living in New York. There was first the struggle
for existence, then the sickening affair of that play; afterward,
misfortune enough to fill a dozen biographies, the fatal reputation of
ill luck, the brief dream of consolation in the love of woman, the