“I’m very sorry, but I’ll confess the whole. The fact is, you’ve jumped into a little pit which I had dug for you—headlong. Upon my word, I beg your pardon. But don’t you know that these class-boxes into which you plump every mother’s son of us, and are at such pains to keep guarded, lest one of us should step out, are the very things I’m vowed to destroy? Why, God be good to us, what are we to do in our boxes—with all this going on?” He stretched his arm out—“This dappled earth, singing, and spinning like a great dusty ball through star-space! Oh, I must talk to you again about all this—you, with children in your two hands to be made into men and women! But not now—it’s too serious. When are you coming to report your ankle, and tell me that I’m forgiven?”

She smiled upon him. “I’ve quite forgiven you. It was I who was foolish. I am sure you must be right. May I come on Sunday? That’s my free day. I should like to talk to you—about lots of things.”

“Delighted to see you,” he said. “Come by daylight this time, and come by road. Here’s your village opening.”

He set her down at the top of the street, since she would not allow him further. Prepared to thank him with her prettiest, the words died on her tongue. “Not a bit, not a bit,” he cut them down. “I love company. I’ve enjoyed myself immensely, orating away. You’re a rare listener; you seem as if you had never heard it before. Good-night.”

She held him up her hand—he touched it—turned the horse, and was gone.

When she had lighted her candle the first thing she did with it was to hold it up that she might look in the glass. Her hot eyes and burning cheeks were ignored for more serious disorders. “My hair!” And then she laughed. “He would not know whether I had any hair!”

Late as it was, and tired as she was, sleep was long in coming.

IX
THE WELDING OF THE BOLT

Poetry, Lord Cantacute was saying at dinner, is like a wind-egg—aberration in the producer, useless for consumption. You don’t attempt to eat a wind-egg. It is remarkable, perhaps; but, once gaped at, you had best leave it to the parent fowl that will be glad of it. “You encourage cannibalism?” asked the Rector, with a lifting eyebrow. Really, Lord Cantacute saw nothing against it. Perhaps it was a matter of taste—but so was poetry. And who else could thrive upon the stuff? Since all this was apropos of the absent Tristram, whose talents and fluency were admitted while their trend was deplored, Mrs. James could not fail to remember a thriving consumer of his wares. Had she not caught him administering wind-egg by spoonfuls to a hatless young lady? The excursion was closed with a flash by Miss Hertha de Speyne, who, from her golden throne, said that poetry was very well if the mortal poet did not practise what he sang. No other art, she thought, had that grain of vice in it. Now, we were not ready to practise poetry.

Mr. Germain contributed nothing to the game, but ate his dinner, or gazed solemnly at one speaker after another. This was unusual; he was fond of abstract discussion, and had his ideas about poetry. He had his favourite practitioners, too—Virgil, Pope, Gray; poetry, for him, must be elegant above all things. Elegant, fastidious, deliberately designed. Dante he could not admire. Petrarch and Tasso were the Italians, their conceits not conceited, for him. He had even—but this was a profound secret—pitched a slender pipe of his own, and was now resuming the exercise. His vein was the courtly-pastoral. The nymph Mero, let us say, was sought by the God Sylvanus, who wooed her in a well-watered vale. Or a young shepherdess—call her Marina—was the dear desire of Cratylus the mature, who offered her with touching diffidence, the well-found hearth, the stored garners, the cellar, for whose ripe antiquity (alas!) he himself could vouch. The maid was not cold; it was himself who doubted whether he were not frigid. He besought her not to despise his silvering beard, the furrow on his brow. Boys, urged he, are hot and prone; but the wood-fire leaps and dies, while the steady glow of the well-pressed peats endures until the morning, and a little breath revives all its force. Thus Cratylus to Marina in his heart.