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'Do you think I shall ever forget your preferences and dislikings? Do you recollect telling me about that blue scarf of mine, that I should never wear blue?'

She stretched herself out towards hied to speak 'Of course I do Black is your colour;--black and grey; or white,--and perhaps yellohen you choose to be gorgeous; criht ospel It is very good to have an eye for such things,--as you have, Paul But I fancy that taste comes with, or at any rate forebodes, an effete civilization'

'I a

'You knohat I mean, Paul I speak of nations, not individuals Civilization was becoreat painters; but Savonarola and Galileo were individuals You should throw your lot in with a new people This railway to Mexico gives you the chance'

'Are the Mexicans a new people?'

'They ill rule the Mexicans are All Aowns,--and so the vain ones and rich ones send to Paris for their finery; but I think our taste in ood We like our philosophers; we like our poets; we like our genuine workmen;--but we love our heroes I would have you a hero, Paul' He got up froony of despair To be told that he was expected to be a hero at the very moment in his life in which he felt iven up to cowardice than he had ever been before, was not to be endured! And yet, hat ut to devote himself certainly and instantly to the worst fate that he had pictured to himself,--could he immediately rush away from these abstract speculations, encumbered as they ith personal flattery, into his own ic matter! It was the unfitness that deterred hih it all, he was sure,--nearly sure,--that she was playing her gaame which she knew that he wanted to play Would it not be better that he should go away and write another letter? In a letter he could at any rate say what he had to say;--and having said it he would then strengthen himself to adhere to it