“I have no doubt he is amiable—he is amiable—but that is not enough for a man. He must be something more than amiable, if he would escape the imputation of being feeble—something more if he would be anything!”
Julia looked at me with eyes of profound and dilating astonishment. Having got thus far, it was easy to advance. The first step is half the journey in all such cases.
“William Edgerton is a little too amiable, perhaps, for his own good. It makes him listless and worthless. He will do nothing at pictures, wasting his time only when he should be at his business.”
“But did I not understand you, Edward, that he was a man of fortune, and independent of his profession?” she answered timidly.
“Even that will not justify a man in becoming a trifler. No man should waste his time in painting, unless he makes a trade of it.”
“But his leisure, Edward,” suggested Julia, with a look of increasing timidity.
“His leisure, indeed, Julia;—but he has been here all day—day after day. If painting is such a passion with him, let him abandon law and take to it. But he should not pursue one art while processing another. It is as if a man hankered after that which he yet lacked the courage to challenge and pursue openly.'
“I don't think you love pictures as you used to, Edward,” she remarked to me, after a little interval passed in unusual silence.
“Perhaps it is because I have matters of more consequence to attend to. YOU seem sufficiently devoted to them now to excuse my indifference.”
“Surely, dear Edward, something I have done vexes you. Tell me, husband. Do not spare me. Say, in what have I offended?”