Cynthia smiled and released me.  Amroth beckoned me to withdraw with him.  When we had got out of earshot, he turned upon me very fiercely, and said, “You have made a great mess of this business.”

“I know it,” I said feebly, “but I cannot for the life of me see where I was wrong.”

“You were wrong from beginning to end,” he said.  “Cannot you see that, whatever this place is, it is not a sentimental place?  It is all this wretched sentiment that has done the mischief.  Come,” he added, “I have an unpleasant task before me, to unmask you to yourself.  I don’t like it, but I must do it.  Don’t make it harder for me.”

“Very good,” I said, rather angrily too.  “But allow me to say this first.  This is a place of muddle.  One is worked too hard, and shown too many things, till one is hopelessly confused.  But I had rather have your criticism first, and then I will make mine.”

“Very well!” said Amroth facing me, looking at me fixedly with his blue eyes, and his nostrils a little distended.  “The mischief lies in your temperament.  You are precocious, and you are volatile.  You have had special opportunities, and in a way you have used them well, but your head has been somewhat turned by your successes.  You came to that place yonder, with Cynthia, with a sense of superiority.  You thought yourself too good for it, and instead of just trying to see into the minds and hearts of the people you met, you despised them; instead of learning, you tried to teach.  You took a feeble interest in Cynthia, made a pet of her; then, when I took you away, you forgot all about her.  Even the great things I was allowed to show you did not make you humble.  You took them as a compliment to your powers.  And so when you had your chance to go back to help Cynthia, you thought out no plan, you asked no advice.  You went down in a very self-sufficient mood, expecting that everything would be easy.”

“That is not true,” I said.  “I was very much perplexed.”

“It is only too true,” said Amroth; “you enjoyed your perplexity; I daresay you called it faith to yourself!  It was that which made you weak.  You lost your temper with Lucius, you made a miserable fight of it—­and even in prison you could not recognise that you were in fault.  You did better at the trial—­I fully admit that you behaved well there—­but the fault is in this, that this girl gave you her heart and her confidence, and you despised them.  Your mind was taken up with other things; a very little more, and you would be fit for the intellectual paradise.  There,” he said, “I have nearly done!  You may be angry if you will, but that is the truth.  You have a wrong idea of this place.  It is not plain sailing here.  Life here is a very serious, very intricate, very difficult business.  The only complications which are removed are the complications of the body; but one has anxious and trying responsibilities all the same, and you have trifled with them.  You must not delude yourself.  You have many good qualities.  You have some courage, much ingenuity, keen interests, and a good deal of conscientiousness; but you have the makings of a dilettante, the readiness to delude yourself that the particular little work you are engaged in is excessively and peculiarly important.  You have got the proportion all wrong.”