It took a very short absence from her—for instance, the interval between dinner and breakfast the next morning—for this idea of her to oust completely the real one. Then he would see her again, and would again be bruised and chilled by the haughty coldness masked by her low, gentle voice, her many silences; and the idea would be shattered; to come together again the minute he was out of her presence.
“Of course! You would be incapable of appreciating Tennyson,” he said angrily.
“Why? Because I venture to hint that your version doesn’t scan?”
“Oh, it’s not only that,” he almost screamed; “it’s really because you think it’s sentimental to quote Tennyson. Can’t you see that simple, trite words like these are the only ones suited to expressing the threadbare yet exquisite emotion that one feels when one walks through autumn fields on Sunday evening?”
“Yes; but why not make those simple, trite words scan?... and look here, Guy,” she added with unusual heat, “it seems to me perfectly absurd to admire Tennyson and crab Wordsworth. It makes one wonder if any of your literary tastes are sincere. Everything you dislike in Wordsworth is in Tennyson too—only in Tennyson the prosaicness and flatness, though it may be better expressed, is infinitely more ignoble. I simply don’t understand this attitude to Wordsworth—it makes me think that all you care about is verbal dexterity. I don’t believe you know what real poetry means.”
Poor Guy! How could he know that her irritation had really nothing to do with his attitude to Wordsworth, that, in fact, he and his poetics were merely a scapegoat?
Shattered and sick at heart, he felt that his fears of the previous evening about Oscar Wilde and brilliance had been ruthlessly confirmed.
She looked at him; he actually had tears in his eyes.
“I ... I seem to have lost my temper,” she said apologetically, “but it was only ... I’ve got rather a headache, as a matter of fact, and what you said yesterday about Wordsworth has rankled—he’s my favourite poet. And you know I belong in taste to an older generation; I simply don’t understand modern things. But, as a matter of fact, I often like your poetry very much.”
This mollified him for the moment.