But this morning, instead of roving over the illustrious gallery, his eye caught and was fascinated by a single portrait.  He stood staring at it for a long time, lost in the thrill of thought.

At last Jane touched his arm.  “What are you looking at?”

He pointed.  “Do you see that?”

“Yes.  It’s—­” She named an eminent actor, then in the heyday of his fame, of whom legend hath it that his photographs were bought in thousands by love-lorn maidens who slept with them beneath their pillows.

Paul drew her away from the little knot of idlers clustered round the window.  “There’s nothing that man can do that I can’t do,” said Paul.

“You’re twenty times better looking,” said Jane.

“I have more intelligence,” said Paul.

“Of course,” said Jane.

“I’m going to be an actor,” said Paul.

“Oh!” cried Jane in sudden rapture.  Then her sturdy common-sense asserted itself.  “But can you act?”

“I’m sure I could, if I tried.  You’ve only got to have the genius to start with and the rest is easy.”

As she did not dare question his genius, she remained silent.

“I’m going to be an actor,” said he, “and when I’m not acting I shall be a poet.”

In spite of her adoration Jane could not forbear a shaft of raillery.  “You’ll leave yourself some time to be a musician, won’t you?”

He laughed.  His alert and retentive mind had seized, long ago, on Rowlatt’s recommendation at the Little Bear Inn, and he had developed, perhaps half consciously, a half sense of humour.  A whole sense, however, is not congruous with the fervid beliefs and soaring ambitions of eighteen.  Your sense of humour, that delicate percipience of proportion, that subrident check on impulse, that touch of the divine fellowship with human frailty, is a thing of mellower growth.  It is a solvent and not an excitant.  It does not stimulate to sublime effort; but it can cool raging passion.  It can take the salt from tears, the bitterness from judgment, the keenness from despair; but in its universal manifestation it would effectually stop a naval engagement.

Paul laughed.  “You mustn’t think I brag too much, Jane,” said he.  “For anybody else I know what I say would be ridiculous.  But for me it’s different.  I’m going to be a great man.  I know it.  If I’m not going to be a great actor, I shall be a great something else.  God doesn’t put such things into people’s heads for nothing.  He didn’t take me from the factory in Bludston and set me here with you, walking up Regent Street, like a gentleman, just to throw me back into the gutter.”

“But who said you were going back to the gutter?” asked Jane.

“Nobody.  I wanted to get right with myself.  But—­that getting right with oneself—­do you think it egotistic?”

“I don’t quite know what that is.”

He defined the term.