“This is, indeed, something, as coming from you, Maurice!” Lionel exclaimed.  “Has it been left for you to discover an absolutely perfect human being?”

“It isn’t for you to find fault with her, anyway,” the other said, rather sharply.  “She’s fond enough of you.”

“Who said I was finding fault with her?—­not likely I am going to find fault with Francie!” Lionel replied, with sufficient good-humor.  “Well, now that you have discovered an absolutely faultless creature, you might come to the help of another who is only too conscious that he has plenty of faults, and who is so dissatisfied with himself and his surroundings that he is about sick of life altogether.”

Notwithstanding the light tone in which he introduced the subject, Mangan looked up quickly, and regarded the younger man with those penetrating gray eyes.

“Where have you been to-day, Linn?”

“Brighton.”

“Among the dukes and duchesses again?  Ah, you needn’t be angry—­I respect as much as anybody those whom God has placed over us—­I haven’t forgotten my catechism—­I can order myself lowly and reverently to all my betters.  But tell me what the matter is.  You sick of life?—­I wonder what the gay world of London would think of that!”

And therewithal Lionel, in a somewhat rambling and incoherent fashion, told his friend of a good many things that had happened to him of late—­of his vague aspirations and dissatisfactions—­of Miss Cunyngham’s visit to the theatre, and his disgust over the music-hall clowning—­of his going down to Brighton that day, and his wish to stand on some other footing with those friends of his—­winding up by asking, to Mangan’s surprise, how long it would take to study for the bar and get called, and whether his training—­the confidence acquired on the stage—­might not help in addressing a jury.

“So the idol has got tired of being worshipped,” Mangan said, at last.  “It is an odd thing.  I wonder how many thousands of people there are in London—­not merely shop-girls—­who consider you the most fortunate person alive—­in whose imagination you loom larger than any saint or soldier, any priest or statesman, of our own time.  And I wonder what they would say if they knew you were thinking of voluntarily abdicating so proud and enviable a position.  Well, well!—­and the reason for this sacrifice?  Of course, you know it is a not uncommon thing for women to give up their carriages and luxuries and fine living, and go into a retreat, where they have to sweep out cells, and even keep strict silence for a week at a time, which, I suppose, is a more difficult business.  The reason in their case is clear enough; they are driven to all that by their spiritual needs; they want to have their souls washed clean by penance and self-denial.  But you,” he continued, in no unfriendly mood, but with his usual uncompromising sincerity, “whence comes your renunciation?  It is simply that a woman has turned your head.