"Because he lacked"--prompted Kingsley. "Finish the sentence, Nansie."
"The desire to produce, to achieve," said Nansie, in a stumbling fashion.
"No, Nansie, that was not the way you intended to finish the sentence. I want it in the original, without correction or afterthought. Because he lacked--"
"Application," said Nansie, desperately.
"Exactly. My own failing." Kingsley spoke gently, and as though he was not in the least dismayed by the example of an aimless life which presented itself in the career of Nansie's father. "Your father had great powers, Nansie, and could have accomplished great things if he had been industrious. But he was a happy as well as a good man. I cannot recall, in any person I ever knew, one who was so thoroughly happy as your father. He did harm to no man. His life was a good life."
"Yes, Kingsley." And yet Nansie was not satisfied with herself for being the cause of the conversation drifting into this channel.
"You see, my love," said Kingsley, in his brightest manner, and Nansie's heart beat gratefully at his cheerful tone, "when a truth comes home to a man he can, at all events, learn something from it, unless he be a worthless fellow. When he sees an example before him he can profit by it, if his mind be set upon it. He lays it before him, he dissects it, he studies it, and he says, 'Ah, I see how it is.' That is what I shall do. Your father and I, in this matter of application and industry, somewhat resemble each other. A kind of innate indolence in both of us. Well, what I've got to do is to tackle it. Within me is an enemy, a bad influence, which I must take in hand. 'Come,' I say to this insidious spirit, 'let us see who will get the best of it.' Thereupon we fall to. The right thing to do, Nansie?"
"Yes," she replied, "but you must not reproach yourself, my dear."
"Oh, I am not doing so," he said, quickly, before she could proceed. "I am applying to the discovery I have made the touchstone of philosophy. There is no doubt of the result, not the slightest. But I don't think it is anything to lament that I seem to find a resemblance in your father's character and mine."
"It is something to be deeply grateful for, my dear."