"No, I'm afraid I cannot."
"I see. After all, I am not forgiven?"
"I am not at all sure that you ought to be."
"I heard what he said to you," she went on almost fiercely. "That's why I hate young poets. He says there is only you to hate."
"So, of course, you hate me?"
"I think I do. I wish I had never heard of you. I wish he had never seen you. I hope you will never come again. I haven't looked at your poems that he praises so. He says they are beautiful. Very well, I shall hate them because they are beautiful. He says they have more life in them than his. Do you understand now why I hate them and you? He was young before you came here. You have made him feel that he is old, that he must die. I don't know what else he said to you. Shall I tell you what he said to me? He said that the world will forget him when it's listening to you."
"You misunderstood him." He thought that he understood her; but it puzzled him that, adoring Fielding as she did, she yet permitted herself to doubt.
"Do you suppose I thought that he grudged you your fame? Because he doesn't. But I do."
"You needn't. At present it only exists in his imagination."
"That's enough. If it exists there—"