No Hero

ink a little, or your imagination is more elastic than mine. Yet you might have a passionate preference for cold sun and bracing airs. To me,

arily in the light of some splendid and spirited animal. I still liked to dwell upon her dancing. She satisfied the mere eye more and more. But I had no reason to suppose that she knew right from wrong in art or literature, any more than she would seem to have distinguished between them in life itself. Her Tauchnitz novel lay beside her on the grass and I again reflected that it would not have found a place on Catherine's loftiest shelf. Catherine would have raved about the view and made delicious fun of Quinby and the judge, and we should have sat together talking poet

tion, Captain Clephane. H

a lot of rot has been written about the eternal snows and the mountain-tops an

s would have made a rather embarrassing quotation. But m

t quote B

y n

es, I don't care for poetry, and

me little severity, "sh

h to understa

ui

and awakened within us a soul for all such things? Catherine had been to me what I instantly desired to become to this benighted beauty; but the desire was not worth entertaining, since I hardly expected to be many minutes longer on speaking terms with Mrs. Lascelles. I re

she, "that Mr. Evers t

sn't," I replied,

son of his mother is always in danger of becoming something else

merely wistful, was it really jealous, or was either element th

m together. Bob was a small boy then, and one of the jolliest. St

the great curve of Théodule

anybody quite like him, or rather I am quite sure that I never did. H

the best type of Eton boy," I declared, airing the little con

t is. He is cocksure of himself, but of nothing else; that seems to me to be the difference. No one could possibly be more simple in himself. He may have the assurance of a man of fifty, yet it

s well as he with her. Was this, then, the way in which a woman would be likely to speak of the young man with whom she had fallen in love? To me the appreciation sounded too frank and discerning and acute. Yet I could not call it dispass

to pick

isn't independent in character as well as in his ways, but only that when all's said he's still a boy and not a man. He can't possibly have a man's experience of t

s looked at m

t he can't take

't say

hat do

and good-humoured a woman. And was it necessary, was it even wise? As I hesitated she turned and glanced downward once more toward the glacier, then rose and went to the

les. "Here's Mr. Evers himself, coming this way back fro

wn face, and there was no mistaking the sudden delight of both. It was sudden and spontaneous, compl

on earth did you get up here? By

y sti

But I'm afraid there was contributory obstinacy in Captain Clephane, because he simply wouldn'

n his little laugh, "but I thought I might as well.

u really bee

the

re's our

bothered with a g

might have stepped str

ughter; "but I say, do you know, if you won't think me awfully rude, I'll p

elles, and rather a cavalier nod to me. But then neither of us had made any effort to detain him and a notable omission I

way home, "that you were going to say about Mr. Evers w

" said I,

u meant that he couldn't take care of himself, and

wasn't that, b

Master Bob without saying a word either to him or to Mrs. La