Book 5 - Chapter 3 - Page 2

eagerness of
expression, as if he had been about to resist this decision with all
his might.

But he controlled himself, and said, with assumed calmness: "Well,
Maggie, if we must part, let us try and forget it for one half hour;
let us talk together a little while, for the last time."

He took her hand, and Maggie felt no reason to withdraw it; his
quietness made her all the more sure she had given him great pain, and
she wanted to show him how unwillingly she had given it. They walked
together hand in hand in silence.

"Let us sit down in the hollow," said Philip, "where we stood the last
time. See how the dog-roses have strewed the ground, and spread their
opal petals over it."

They sat down at the roots of the slanting ash.

"I've begun my picture of you among the Scotch firs, Maggie," said
Philip, "so you must let me study your face a little, while you
stay,--since I am not to see it again. Please turn your head this
way."

This was said in an entreating voice, and it would have been very hard
of Maggie to refuse. The full, lustrous face, with the bright black
coronet, looked down like that of a divinity well pleased to be
worshipped, on the pale-hued, small-featured face that was turned up
to it.

"I shall be sitting for my second portrait then," she said, smiling.
"Will it be larger than the other?"

"Oh yes, much larger. It is an oil-painting. You will look like a tall
Hamadryad, dark and strong and noble, just issued from one of the
fir-trees, when the stems are casting their afternoon shadows on the
grass."

"You seem to think more of painting than of anything now, Philip?"

"Perhaps I do," said Philip, rather sadly; "but I think of too many
things,--sow all sorts of seeds, and get no great harvest from any one
of them. I'm cursed with susceptibility in every direction, and
effective faculty in none. I care for painting and music; I care for
classic literature, and mediæval literature, and modern literature; I
flutter all ways, and fly in none."

"But surely that is a happiness to have so many tastes,--to enjoy so
many beautiful things, when they are within your reach," said Maggie,
musingly. "It always seemed to me a sort of clever stupidity only to
have one sort of talent,--almost like a carrier-pigeon."

"It might be a happiness to have many tastes if I were like other
men," said Philip, bitterly. "I might get some power and distinction
by mere mediocrity, as they do; at least I should get those middling
satisfactions which make men contented to do without great ones. I
might think society at St. Ogg's agreeable then. But nothing could
make life worth the purchase-money of pain to me, but some faculty