poke just now who are the slaves
of what little imagination they have, who can make themselves ill
or sometimes well under its influence. But when a man uses his
imagination professionally as long as I have done it takes a place in
his life apart. It has no influence whatever on his daily life, on his
physical or even his mental being. He knows it too well. It would
seem as if the imagination itself were cognisant of this fact and was
too wise to court defeat."

"I can understand that, but I also know that genius is too abnormal to
accept any such reasoning, no matter what the highly developed brain
may be capable of. Unknown to yourself you have become the victim
first of an idea, then of a habit. You will struggle and exhaust
yourself and end by hating yourself and me. You have no doubt that
this would be a greater work than your greatest?"

"Oh, no! no!"

"Then do me the justice to make one attempt at least to write it. Come
to the library!"

His face had been turned from her for some moments, but at the last
words, so full of concrete suggestion, he moved irresistibly and she
saw that his eyes were blazing with eagerness, with a desire she had
never seen.

"Come," she said.

He stared at her, through her, miles beyond her, then turned
mechanically toward his library. "Perhaps," he muttered. "Who
knows? Why not?"

CHAPTER XXIII

When Anne rose the next morning and tapped on Warner's door there was
no answer. She entered softly, but found that his bed had not been
occupied. For this she was not unprepared, and although she had no
intention of galling her poet with the routine of daily life, still
must he be fed, and she went at once to the library to invite him to
breakfast. He was not there. She glanced hastily over the loose
sheets of paper on his writing table. There were a few scratches,
unintelligible phrases, nothing more. In the gallery she met the
major-domo, who informed her that the master had gone out in his boat
about five o'clock. The day was clear and the waters calmer. There was
no reason for either surprise or uneasiness, and Anne, who expected
vagaries of every sort until the poem was finished, endeavoured to
while away the long day with a new novel sent her by Medora Ogilvy.
But she had instinctively taken a chair by a window facing the sea,
and as the day wore on and she saw no sign of boat of any sort, she
finally renounced the attempt to keep her mind in tune with fiction.
She