“I will answer you anything you choose to ask.”
“That makes it the more difficult; but I will—I cannot bear to remain longer in doubt: did you really write that poem you gave to Kate Graeme—compose it, I mean, your own self?”
“I made no secret of that when I gave it her,” said Donal, not perceiving her drift.
“Then you did really write it?”
Donal looked at her in perplexity. Her face grew very red, and tears began to come in her eyes.
“You must pardon me!” she said: “I am so ignorant! And we live in such an out-of-the-way place that—that it seems very unlikely a real poet—! And then I have been told there are people who have a passion for appearing to do the thing they are not able to do, and I was anxious to be quite sure! My mind would keep brooding over it, and wondering, and longing to know for certain!—So I resolved at last that I would be rid of the doubt, even at the risk of offending you. I know I have been rude—unpardonably rude, but—”
“But,” supplemented Donal, with a most sympathetic smile, for he understood her as his own thought, “you do not feel quite sure yet! What a priori reason do you see why I should not be able to write verses? There is no rule as to where poetry grows: one place is as good as another for that!”
“I hope you will forgive me! I hope I have not offended you very much!”
“Nobody in such a world as this ought to be offended at being asked for proof. If there are in it rogues that look like honest men, how is any one, without a special gift of insight, to be always sure of the honest man? Even the man whom a woman loves best will sometimes tear her heart to pieces! I will give you all the proof you can desire.—And lest the tempter should say I made up the proof itself between now and to-morrow morning, I will fetch it at once.”
“Oh, Mr. Grant, spare me! I am not, indeed, I am not so bad as that!”