This black draught of unrequited
toil is True Happiness, and down it goes with every symptom of
pleasure. This Ibsen, they say, is dull past believing, and we
yawn and stretch beyond endurance. Pardon! they interrupt, but
this Ibsen is deep and delightful, and we vie with one another in
an excess of entertainment. And when we open the heads of these
two young people, we find, not a straightforward motive on the
surface anywhere; we find, indeed, not a soul so much as an
oversoul, a zeitgeist, a congestion of acquired ideas, a
highway's feast of fine, confused thinking. The girl is resolute
to Live Her Own Life, a phrase you may have heard before, and the
man has a pretty perverted ambition to be a cynical artistic
person of the very calmest description. He is hoping for the
awakening of Passion in her, among other things. He knows Passion
ought to awaken, from the text-books he has studied. He knows she
admires his genius, but he is unaware that she does not admire
his head. He is quite a distinguished art critic in London, and
he met her at that celebrated lady novelist's, her stepmother,
and here you have them well embarked upon the Adventure. Both are
in the first stage of repentance, which consists, as you have
probably found for yourself, in setting your teeth hard and
saying' "I WILL go on."
Things, you see, have jarred a little, and they ride on their way
together with a certain aloofness of manner that promises ill for
the orthodox development of the Adventure.
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