to wait no
longer.

They were standing at the window watching the moon fight its way
amidst torn black clouds and flinging glittering doles upon the black
and swollen waters. She put her hand on his shoulder as a man might
have done and said in a matter-of-fact tone:

"You want to write. You are quick with a new poem. That must be patent
even to the servants. I wish you would write it."

He jerked up his shoulders as if to dislodge her hand, then
recollected himself and put his arm about her.

"I never intend to write another poem," he said.

"That is nonsense. A poem must be much like a baby. If it is conceived
it must be born. Do you deny it is there?" tapping his forehead.

"When the devil takes possession it is better to stifle him before he
grows to his full strength."

"You are unjust to speak in that fashion of the most divine of all
gifts. You are not intimating that your poem is too wicked to
publish?"

"No!" He flung out his hands, striking the window. His eyes expanded
and flashed. "I believe it to be the most beautiful poem ever
conceived!" he cried. "I never before knew much about any of my poems
until I had pen in hand, but although I could not recite a line of
this I can see it all. I can feel it. I can hear it. It calls me in
my dreams and whispers when I am closest to you. And you--you--are
its inspiration. You have liberated all that was locked from my
imagination before. I lived in an unreal world until I knew, lived
with you. Knowing that so well, I believed that my deserted muse would
either take herself off in disdain, or be smothered dead. Art has
always been jealous of mortal happiness. But the emotions I have
experienced in the past six months--despair, hope, despair, hope,
superlative happiness, mere content, the very madness of terror, and
its equally violent reaction when I experienced the profoundest
religious emotion--all this has enriched my nature, my mind, that
abnormal patch in my brain that creates. Ever since I took pen
in hand I have dreamed of a poetic meridian that I have never
approached--until now!"

"What must it be?" cried Anne, quivering with excitement and delight.
"You have done more than other men already."

"I have never written a great poetical drama. My faculty has been
mainly narrative, lyric, epic, with dramatic action in short bursts
only. The power to build a great, sustained, and varied drama, the
richness and ripeness of dramatic imagination, of chara