He may see how little success has to do with merit, and his motive may be his very humility.' This manner of treating her rather provoked Elfride.

No sooner did she agree with him than he ceased to seem to wish it, and took the other side.

'Ah,' she thought inwardly, 'I shall have nothing to do with a man of this kind, though he is our visitor.' 'I think you will find,' resumed Knight, pursuing the conversation more for the sake of finishing off his thoughts on the subject than for engaging her attention, 'that in actual life it is merely a matter of instinct with men--this trying to push on.

They awake to a recognition that they have, without premeditation, begun to try a little, and they say to themselves, "Since I have tried thus much, I will try a little more." They go on because they have begun.' Elfride, in her turn, was not particularly attending to his words at this moment.

She had, unconsciously to herself, a way of seizing any point in the remarks of an interlocutor which interested her, and dwelling upon it, and thinking thoughts of her own thereupon, totally oblivious of all that he might say in continuation.