-in retreat, and if
Ermentrude preferred to regard with obstinacy unusual in her mobile
temperament the picture of Paris below them, it was because she felt
that Keroulan was literally staring at her.

A few moments after their arrival and with the advent of tea, he had
accomplished what she had fervently wished for the night she had met
him--he succeeded, by several easy moves, in isolating her from her
aunt, and, notwithstanding her admiration, her desire to tap with her
knuckles the metal of her idol and listen for a ring of hollowness, she
was alarmed. Yet, perversely, she knew that he would not exhibit his
paces before his wife--naturally a disinterested spectator--or before
her aunt, who was hardly "intimate" enough. The long-desired hour found
her disquieted. She did not have many moments to analyze these mixed
emotions, for he spoke, and his voice was agreeably modulated.

"You, indeed, honour the poor poet's abode with your youth and your
responsive soul, Miss Adams. I thank you, though my gratitude will seem
as poor as my hospitality." She looked at him now, a little fluttered.
"You bring to me across seas the homage of a fresh nation, a fresh
nature." She beat a mental retreat at these calm, confident phrases;
what could he know of her homage? "And if Amiel has said, 'Un paysage
est un etat de l'ame,' I may amend it by calling _my_ soul a state of
landscape, since it has been visited by your image." This was more
reassuring, if exuberant.

"Man is mere inert matter when born, but his soul is his own work.
Hence, I assert: the Creator of man is--man." _Now_ she felt at ease.
This wisdom, hewn from the vast quarry of his genius, she had
encountered before in his Golden Glaze, that book which had built
temples of worship in America wherein men and women sought and found the
pabulum for living beautifully. He was "talking" his book. Why not? It
was certainly delightful plagiarism!

"You know, dear young lady," he continued, and his eyes, with their
contracting and expanding disks, held her attention like a clear flame,
"do you know that my plays, my books, are but the drama of my conscience
exteriorized? Out of the reservoirs of my soul I draw my inspiration. I
have an aesthetic horror of evidence; like Renan, I loathe the deadly
heresy of affirmation; I have the certitude of doubt, for are we poets
not the lovers of the truth decorated? When I built my lordly palace of
art, it was not with the ugly durabilit