"No, Victor; I am not slanging you for one or the other course. You
acted up to your own principle--every fellow must do that; but I am
not sure your principle is the best--that perpetual denial to
impulse, that refusal to take what you can get in the moment,
because of what you may be called upon to pay hereafter. At any
rate, it may not be the luckiest nor the happiest. But still, in the
case of a man who has many equally strong wishes, it is difficult to
say what he should do. In your case the upshot of either resolution
would have been the same--as things are, you will get your book out
and be discontented; in the other case, you would have married Lucia
and been discontented!"
"You may be as cynical as you please," I muttered, with my hands
pressed over my eyes. "I am not responsible for the complex nature
of the human brain, nor can I simplify it. I know what I am going to
do now. Having secured the work, I am going to gain Lucia too, if it
is in the power of any man--whether, as you put it, her virtue, or
her health, or her inclination, or the whole lot together, have
broken down!"
"And if you don't get her, you will get over it: we all do, Vic," he
said, with a smile.
"Very possibly," I assented.
It was not worth while to discuss a contingency I had determined to
prevent.
"A man's profession is his best friend," Dick went on, stretching
himself out on the couch.
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