rt of their conversation among the
relics, perhaps, but Ralph was flattered to think that she remembered
anything about it.

"Or did I confess that I hated all books?" she went on, seeing him look
up with an air of inquiry. "I forget--"

"Do you hate all books?" he asked.

"It would be absurd to say that I hate all books when I've only read
ten, perhaps; but--' Here she pulled herself up short.

"Well?"

"Yes, I do hate books," she continued. "Why do you want to be for ever
talking about your feelings? That's what I can't make out. And poetry's
all about feelings--novels are all about feelings."

She cut a cake vigorously into slices, and providing a tray with bread
and butter for Mrs. Hilbery, who was in her room with a cold, she rose
to go upstairs.

Ralph held the door open for her, and then stood with clasped hands in
the middle of the room. His eyes were bright, and, indeed, he scarcely
knew whether they beheld dreams or realities. All down the street and
on the doorstep, and while he mounted the stairs, his dream of Katharine
possessed him; on the threshold of the room he had dismissed it, in
order to prevent too painful a collision between what he dreamt of her
and what she was. And in five minutes she had filled the shell of the
old dream with the flesh of life; looked with fire out of phantom eyes.
He glanced about him with bewilderment at finding himself among her
chairs and tables; they were solid, for he grasped the back of the chair
in which Katharine had sat; and yet they were unreal; the atmosphere was
that of a dream. He summoned all the faculties of his spirit to seize
what the minutes had to give him; and from the depths of his mind there
rose unchecked a joyful recognition of the truth that human nature
surpasses, in its beauty, all that our wildest dreams bring us hints of.

Katharine came into the room a moment later. He stood watching her come
towards him, and thought her more beautiful and strange than his dream
of her; for the real Katharine could speak the words which seemed
to crowd behind the forehead and in the depths of the eyes, and the
commonest sentence would be flashed on by this immortal light. And she
overflowed the edges of the dream; he remarked that her softness was
like that of some vast snowy owl; she wore a ruby on her finger.

"My mother wants me to tell you," she said, "that she hopes you have
begun your poem. She says every one ought to write poetry.... All my
relat