"That's as much as to say," observed his brother, "that the Liberals
stand to win, as things are. Now, there seems to be no doubt that
Liversedge would gladly withdraw in favour of a better man. What I
want you to do is to set this thing in train for me. I am in
earnest."
"You astonish me! I can't reconcile such an ambition with"----
"No, no; of course not." Glazzard spoke with unwonted animation.
"You don't know what my life is and has been. Look I must do
something to make my blood circulate, or I shall furnish a case for
the coroner one of these mornings. I want excitement. I have taken
up one thing after another, and gone just far enough to understand
that there's no hope of reaching what I aimed at--superlative
excellence; then the thing began to nauseate me. I'm like poor
Jackson, the novelist, who groaned to me once that for fifteen years
the reviewers had been describing his books as 'above the average.'
In whatever I have undertaken the results were 'above the average,'
and that's all. This is damned poor consolation for a man with a
temperament like mine!"
His voice broke down. He had talked himself into a tremor, and the
exhibition of feeling astonished his brother, who--as is so often
the case between brothers--had never suspected what lay beneath
the surface of Eustace's _dilettante_ life.
"I can enter into that," said the elder, slowly.
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