Richmond dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1884-1903, 1888-02-12

possible to do or say anything convention.

possible TO do or say anything convention
al. The feeling grew stronger every mo-
ment he conld, il seemed to him, take
up none OF the ordinary subjects with
which he was accustomed TO "Dake
conversation TO the women he met
on the rare occasions when he dined
ont. His answers to her were very
little more than monosyllabic. and yet
he did not want to go; this woman
made him long to talk TO her. and at last,
in desperation. he did what he had de-
termined nothing should induce him TO
do with her-he began to talk of the
case over which they first met BE
touched on it only at first but she took
it up at once. and in a minute or two she
had reused herself from her half-leanlng
position with a quick, energetic move
ment. and every line Of her still white
face was distinct in the freight.
Very earnestly she. answered his half
hesitatng sentences and TO DIR. Walters
own intense surprise, when he came TO
think of it aiterward they had In mo-
ment begun a discussion on a disputed
scientific point which was just then ex-
citing the medical world. DR.. Walter
forgot utterly that he was talking to
woman only. 1t was as much As he
could do TO maintain the ground on
which, when he had cursorily thought
over the point on seeing it alluded to IN
medical paper, he had thought
himself 80 firmly established. lie
found he had met woman
who knew far more about this
particular point, far moro about
things not technical than he himself
did and when their argument ended be
frankly owned himself wrong. The ten
minutes it had taken had made them know
each other better than ten months OF
ordinary intercourse and whom she
went on to talk Of professional difficulties
and discouragements, and the rare sue
cesses which, to her, seemed amply to
make up for them, it did not once seem
strange that she should be saying all
this TO him he only felt as if he suddenly
saw new world-a world where the
glory of their common work lay, not IN
the intellectual triumphs it brought
them, but in its power to Tighten some
of tho heaviest darkness in life. The
words which, ~ she sSid them, brought
faint color into Mary Chaston's face
"The profession seems to me most nearly
TO touch the ideal life-one in which it Is
possible to live for those who are here
with us so filed his mind that he could
say nothing to her in answer, while she
walked toward a bookcase for ascientltic
book she had promised to lend him. lie
took 1t, thanked her, and said good
bye-still thinking.
On reaching his own room the first
thing that caught his eye lying under
his reading lamp was cynical novel he
had been reading late the night before.
Two or three Of the cutting epigrsm-
matte sentences he had enjoyed then
camo before his mind now end, feeling
as if tho book represented the hardness
he had never before recognized IN him
self, he flung it with a furious impulse
into the FIRE.
For long after this his work seemed to
him impossible almost ; the ideal Mary
Chastons words had shown him was
always with him, and in the light of it
the self-contempt with which he looked
at his own life strengthened daily. At
intervals the hard, narow view which
had been his Cor ell these years seemed
enough, but ouly at intervals He could
not settle again into the callousness from
which he had been reused, and as each
day S work forced on him the knowledge
that his view OF life and the higher one
that she had shown him were incompati-
bic, the conflict. from being half uncon-
scious, became intensely earnest.