'There's nowhere else I really care to live. Nothing would please me so much as to spend the rest of my life at Merriston, dabbling at my painting and going in seriously for farming.'
'Why don't you do it?'
'Why, money! I've got no money. It's expensive work to educate oneself by experience, and I'm ignorant. You show me how ignorant. No; I'm afraid I'm to go on drifting, and never lead the life I best like.'
Althea was silent. She hardly knew what she was feeling, but it pressed upon her so, that she was afraid lest a breath would stir some consciousness in him. She had money, a good deal. What a pity that he had none.
'Now you,' Gerald went on, 'have all sorts of big, wise plans for life, I've no doubt. It would interest me to hear about them.'
'No; I drift too,' said Althea.
'You can't call it drifting when you read and study such a lot.'
'Oh yes, I can, when there is no real aim in the work. You should hear Mr. Kane scold me about that.'
Gerald was not interested in Mr. Kane. 'I should think, after all you've done, you might rest on your oars for a bit,' he remarked. 'It's quite enough, I should think, for a woman to know so much. If you liked to do anything, you'd do it awfully well, I'm sure.'
Ah, what would she not like to do! Help you to steer to any port you wanted was the half-articulate cry of her heart.