cter portrayal,
representation as distinct from analysis, of vigorous scenes that
sweep through the excited brain of the reader with the rush of the
hurricane, and owe nothing to metrical sweetness, to lyrical
melody--that has never come before--and now--now----"

"You will write it! Do you--can you imagine that I am jealous--that I
am not as ambitious for you as you could be for yourself?"

"I have never been ambitious before. I have never cared enough about
the world. I wrote first because the songs sang off the point of
my quill, and then to keep a roof over my head. I have never placed
any inordinate value on my work after it was done, although the making
of it gave me the keenest happiness, the polishing delighted all the
artist in me. It is only now, now, for the first time, that I have
been fancying myself going down to posterity in the company of the
immortals. Oh God, what irony! When it did not matter the inspiration
lagged, and now it can do me no good!"

"But it shall! And as much for me as for your fame. Your work has been
little less to me than yourself. I must have this!"

He turned to her for the first time and looked at her curiously. "Is
it possible that you do not know the reason why I cannot write?" he
asked. "We have avoided the subject, but I understood that you knew.
Hunsdon told me----"

"Oh, yes, but that was when you were physically and morally a----" she
stopped short, blushing painfully.

"A wreck," he supplemented grimly.

"Well! You had let yourself go. Now it is different. You are well. You
are happy. Even your brain is stronger--your will, as a matter of
course."

"I never wrote a line in my earliest youth without stimulant."

"But you might have done so. It is only a freak of imagination that
prompts you to believe that you cannot write alone, that you must take
alcohol into partnership, as it were. Even little people are ruled by
imagination; how much more so a great faculty in which imagination
must follow many morbid and eccentric tracks? And habit, no doubt, is
the greatest of all forces, while it is undisturbed. But that old
habit of yours has been shattered these last months. You made no
attempt to resist before. You could resist now. If I have been the
inspiration of this poem, why cannot I take the place of brandy? It is
no great compliment to me if I cannot. Try."

He put his hands on her shoulders and looked more the man than the
poet for the moment. "Anne," he sai