another young gentleman. He had a light moustache and a fancy
waistcoat, both of which looked new. He was young, rich, handsome, and
sufficiently silly to make any woman wish to take charge of him, and
her father had told him to "go in and win, my boy, there's no one I'd
like better, sir," a very good heartener for a slightly dubious youth,
even though he may consider that the lady of his choice is watching
another man more intently than is pleasant.

The young gentleman gripped, with careful frenzy, at his light, new
moustache, and growled as he watched the stalking. But the poet was
occupied and careless, and then, suddenly, it happened. What movement,
conscious or unconscious, opened his eyes one cannot say: the thing
seemed to be done without any preliminaries, and he was awakened and in
the toils.

They had been reading poetry together, his poetry, and he was
expressing, more to himself than to her, how difficult and how
delightful it was to work with entire satisfaction within the "scanty
plot" of a sonnet. She was listening with bated breath, and answering
with an animation more than slightly tinged with ignorance, for she was
as little interested in the making of sonnets as in the making of
shoes.--Nobody is interested in the making of sonnets, not even poets.

He fell silent after a space and sat gazing at the moon where it globed
out on the stillness, and she also became silent. Her nerves, she told
herself, were out of order. She was more used to dismissing than to
being dismissed and yet she seemed beaten. There was nothing further
that a girl could do. He cared no more about her than he did about
whatever woman cleaned his rooms. She was not angry, but a feeling of
weariness came upon her. (It is odd that one can be so in earnest when
one is in jest.) Once or twice she shook her head at the moon, and as
she stared, moody and quiet, it seemed that the moon had slid beyond
her vision and she was looking into great caverns of space, bursting
with blackness. Some horror of emptiness was reaching to roll her in
pits of murk, where her screams would be battered back on her tongue
soundless.

With an effort she drew her eyes into focus again and turned them,
smiling bitterly, on her companion, and, lo, he was looking at her with
timid eyes, amazed eyes, and they spoke, for all their timidity, louder
than trumpets. She knew that look, who could mistake it? Here was
flame from the authentic fire. He was silent,