s metal when, after he has painfully adjusted himself
to what seems a wise provision, he finds all his mental precaution a little
beside the mark, and his excellent intentions no better than miscalculated
dovetails, accurately cut from a wrong starting-point. His magnanimity has got
itself ready to meet misbehaviour, and finds quite a different call upon it.
Something of this kind happened to Deronda.
    His first impression was one of pure pleasure and amusement at finding his
sitting-room transformed into an atelier strewed with miscellaneous drawings and
with the contents of two chests from Rome, the lower half of the windows
darkened with baize, and the blond Hans in his weird youth as the presiding
genius of the littered place - his hair longer than of old, his face more
whimsically creased, and his high voice as usual getting higher under the
excitement of rapid talk. The friendship of the two had been kept up warmly
since the memorable Cambridge time, not only by correspondence but by little
episodes of companionship abroad and in England, and the original relation of
confidence on one side and indulgence on the other had been developed in
practice, as is wont to be the case where such spiritual borrowing and lending
has been well begun.
    »I knew you would like to see my casts and antiquities,« said Hans, after
the first hearty greetings and inquiries, »so I didn't scruple to unlade my
chests here. But I've found two rooms at Chelsea not many hundred yards from my
mother and sisters, and I shall soon be ready to hang out there - when they've
scraped the walls and put in some new lights. That's all I'm waiting for. But
you see I don't wait to begin work: you can't conceive what a great fellow I'm
going to be. The seed of immortality has sprouted within me.«
    »Only a fungoid growth, I daresay - a crowing disease in the lungs,« said
Deronda, accustomed to treat Hans in brotherly fashion. He was walking towards
some drawings propped on the ledge of his bookcases; five rapidly-sketched heads
- different aspects of the same face. He stood at a convenient distance from
them, without making any remark. Hans, too, was silent for a minute, took up his
palette and began touching the picture on his easel.
    »What do you think of them?« he said at last.
    »The full face looks too massive; otherwise the likenesses are good,« said
Deronda, more coldly than was usual with him.
    »No, it is