of fidelity to the obligations of true
_camaraderie_, and if Miss Blanchet had had any manner of work to
do, from the mending of a stocking to the teaching of a school, in
which Minola could possibly have assisted her, Minola would never have
thought of leaving her to do the work alone. Or even if Miss Blanchet
had work to do in which Minola could not have helped her, but to which
her presence would be any manner of encouragement, Minola would have
stayed with her, and never dreamed of play while her companion had to
be at work. But we may safely appeal to all the poets of all time to
say whether anybody ever desired companionship while engaged in the
composition of poetry. Sappho herself could have well dispensed with
the society of Phaon at such a moment. It is true that Corinne threw
off some of her grandest effusions in full face of an admiring crowd,
and recited them not only with Lord Nelvil, but at him. Corinne,
however, was of the improvisatrice class, to which Mary Blanchet did
not profess to belong; and we own, moreover, to a constant suspicion
that Corinne must have sat up late for many previous nights getting her
improvisations by heart. At all events Miss Blanchet was not Corinne,
and required seclusion, and much thought, and comparison of rhymes, and
even looking out in dictionaries, in order to the composition of her
poems. At the present time Minola was well aware that her friend had a
new collection of poems on hand, and that the poems would be churned
off with less difficulty if the author were occasionally left to
herself for an hour or two. Therefore Minola was free to go into
Regent's Park, with untroubled conscience and light heart. The woman
who was not a poet revelled in the rustling branches and the sight of
the soft grass, and was filled with glad visions and dreams by the
flowing even of a poor, clouded, slow canal stream, and was rapt into
the ideal at the sight of a reed growing in the water and shaken by the
wind. The poetess remained at home in a dull room, and hammered out
rhymes with the help of a dictionary.

But, to do Minola justice, she was not wholly given up, even in these
free and lonely hours, to the sweet, innocent sensuousness that fills
certain beings when amid trees and the sounds of flowing water. She had
many scruples about the possible selfishness of her life, and wondered
whether it was not wrong thus to live, and whether it was not through
some fault of hers that no oppo