In spite of her flash of anger at the mention of her husband’s name, it was clear that her curiosity had been aroused. Nor was the Poet dismayed by a light in her dark eyes which he interpreted as expressing a sense of triumph and vindication.
“I suppose he’s satisfied now,” she said.
“I fancy his state of mind isn’t enviable,” the Poet replied evenly. “Life, when you come to think of it, is a good deal like writing a sonnet. You start off bravely with your rhyme words scrawled at the top of the page. Four lines may come easily enough; but the words you have counted on to carry you through lead into all manner of complications. You are betrayed into saying the reverse of the thing you started out to say. You begin with spring and after you’ve got the birds to singing, the powers of mischief turn the seasons upside down, and before you know it the autumn leaves are falling; it’s extremely discouraging! If we could only stick to the text—”
His gesture transferred the illustration from the field of literary composition to the ampler domain of life.
She smiled at his feigned helplessness to pursue his argument further.
“But when the rhyme words won’t carry sense, and you have to throw the whole thing overboard—” she ventured.
“No, oh, no! That’s the joy of rhyming—its endless fascination! The discreet and economical poet never throws away even a single line; there’s always a chance that it may be of use.” He was feeling his way back to his illustration of life from the embarrassments of sonneteering, and smiled as his whimsical fancy caught at a clue. “If you don’t forget the text,—if you’re quite sure you have an idea,—or an ideal!—then it’s profitable to keep fussing away at it. If a bad line offend you, pluck it out; or maybe a line gets into the wrong place and has to be moved around until it fits. It’s all a good deal like the work Marjorie’s doing outside—fitting blocks together that have to go in a certain way or the whole structure will tumble. It’s the height of cowardice to give up and persuade yourself that you’ve exhausted the subject in a quatrain. The good craftsman will follow the pattern—perfect his work, make it express the best in himself!”
And this referred to the estrangement of Miles Redfield and his wife or not; just as one might please to take it.
“Miles has gone away, I suppose,” she remarked listlessly.
This made the situation quite concrete again, and any expression of interest, no matter how indifferent, would have caused the Poet’s heart to bound; but his face did not betray him.