In this crass, provincial town,
I must go!
For I am lonely here,
One lonely, lonely little figure
Upbearing still one white, white light invisible.
How could those see whose thoughts are all
Of marts and churches, dancing, and the links?”
She paused to apply the blotter upon a tiny area of ink, oozed from the pen to her forefinger, which had pressed too ardently, being tense with creative art; and having thus broken the spell of composition, she glanced frowningly out of the window beside her desk. Across the way, she could see Renfrew Mears sitting under the walnut tree in his own yard. He was not looking toward her, but leaned back in a wicker chair, and to a sympathetic observation his attitude and absent skyward gaze might have expressed a contemplative bafflement. However, this was not Muriel’s interpretation, for she wrote:
“Across the street, ignoble in content,
Under a dusty walnut tree,