‘I have no right,’ he pursued, with a shadow of kindly anxiety on his features, ‘to offer you advice, but—well, if you will let me insist on what I have learned from my own experience. There’s nothing like having a special line of work and sticking to it vigorously. I, unfortunately, shall never do anything of any account,—but I know so well the conflict between diverging tastes. It has played the deuce with me, in all sorts of ways. At Zurich I utterly wasted my time, and I’ve done no better since I came back to England. Don’t think me presumptuous. I only mean—well, it is so important to—to go ahead in one line.’
His air of laughing apology was very pleasant. Godwin felt his heart open to the kind fellow.
‘No one needs the advice more than I,’ he replied. ‘I am going back to the line I
