'And imposition,' added Gowan, laughing; 'we won't leave out the

imposition. I hope I may not break down in that; but there, my being

a disappointed man may show itself. I may not be able to face it out

gravely enough. Between you and me, I think there is some danger of my

being just enough soured not to be able to do that.'

'To do what?' asked Clennam. 'To keep it up.

To help myself in my turn, as the man before me helps

himself in his, and pass the bottle of smoke. To keep up the pretence

as to labour, and study, and patience, and being devoted to my art, and

giving up many solitary days to it, and abandoning many pleasures for

it, and living in it, and all the rest of it--in short, to pass the

bottle of smoke according to rule.'

'But it is well for a man to respect his own vocation, whatever it is;

and to think himself bound to uphold it, and to claim for it the respect

it deserves; is it not?' Arthur reasoned. 'And your vocation, Gowan,

may really demand this suit and service. I confess I should have thought

that all Art did.' 'What a good fellow you are, Clennam!' exclaimed the other, stopping

to look at him, as if with irrepressible admiration. 'What a capital

fellow! You have never been disappointed.

That's easy to see.' It would have been so cruel if he had meant it, that Clennam firmly

resolved to believe he did not mean it. Gowan, without pausing, laid his

hand upon his shoulder, and laughingly and lightly went on: 'Clennam, I don't like to dispel your generous visions, and I would give

any money (if I had any), to live in such a rose-coloured mist. But what

I do in my trade, I do to sell. What all we fellows do, we do to

sell. If we didn't want to sell it for the most we can get for it, we

shouldn't do it. Being work, it has to be done; but it's easily enough

done. All the rest is hocus-pocus.

Now here's one of the advantages, or disadvantages, of knowing a

disappointed man. You hear the truth.'

Whatever he had heard, and whether it deserved that name or another, it

sank into Clennam's mind. It so took root there, that he began to fear

Henry Gowan would always be a trouble to him, and that so far he had

gained little or nothing from the dismissal of Nobody, with all his

inconsistencies, anxieties, and contradictions. He found a contest still

always going on in his breast between his promise to keep Gowan in

none but good aspects before the mind of Mr Meagles, and his enforced

observation of Gowan in aspects that had no good in them. Nor could he

quite support his own conscientious nature against misgivings that he

distorted and discoloured himself, by reminding himself that he never

sought those discoveries, and that he would have avoided them with

willingness and great relief. For he never could forget what he had

been; and he knew that he had once disliked Gowan for no better reason

than that he had come in his way.




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