rous
than of old he needed a corresponding amount of exercise. There
finally came an entire week when he was forced to remain indoors, so
persistent were the torrential rains, and after the first two days he
ceased even to pretend to read, but sat staring out of the window with
blank eyes and set lips, at the gray deluge beating down the palm
trees. He came to the table and consumed his meals mechanically. Nor
was he irritable. The gentleness of his nature seemed unaffected, but
that his mental part seethed was autoptical. If he was less the lover
he clung to Anne as to a rock in mid-ocean, and if he would not talk
he was uneasy if she left the room.

There was but one explanation, and he was becoming less the man and
more the poet every day. He slept little, and lost the spring from his
gait. Anne was as convinced as Lord Hunsdon or Lady Constance that all
geniuses were unsound of mind no matter how normal they might be while
the creative faculty slept. Sleep it must, and no doubt this familiar
of Warner's had been almost moribund owing to the extraordinary and
unexpected change that had taken place in his life, and the new
interest that had held every faculty. This interest was no less alive,
but it was no longer novel, and a ghost had risen in his brain
clamouring for form and substance.

Anne wished that he would write the poem and have done with it. She
had never for a moment demanded that he should sacrifice his career
to her, and during the past months, having admired as much as she
loved him, she had dismissed as a mere legend the belief held by his
friends that he could not write without stimulant. And she loved the
poet as much as she loved the man. Indeed it was the poet she had
loved first, to whom she had owed a happiness during many lonely years
almost as perfect as the man had given her. That he had no weakness
for spirits was indubious. There were always cognac and Madeira on the
table in the living room where they received the convivial planters,
and she drank Canary herself at table. It was patent to her that he
refrained from writing because he had voluntarily given her his word
he would write no more, and that he had but to take pen in hand for
the flood to burst. She did not broach the subject for some days,
waiting for him to make an appeal of some sort, no matter how subtle,
but toward the end of this stormy week when he was looking more
forlorn and haunted every moment, she suddenly determined