supple yet delicate figure. She came nearer
still, so near that he could trace the faint blue veins in her forehead,
and once more recall the peculiar color of her eyes. Then he spoke to
her, raising his hand with a suddenly returning instinct of
conventionality for his cap; but he had risen without it, and was
standing before her bare-headed.

"I am a trespasser, I fear," he said hesitatingly.

She came to a standstill by his side, and shook her head slowly.

"No, this is common land. There is a footpath, you see, although it is
seldom used. It leads nowhere but to the Court."

"It is a favorite walk of mine," he said.

"Yes, it is pleasant. You bring a companion with you," she remarked,
pointing to his book.

He glanced down at it, and then up at her again.

"Yes; a faithful friend, too. We spend a good deal of time out of doors
together."

She read the title, and glanced up at him with a shade of interest in
her face.

"Shelley was a great poet, I suppose," she said; "but I do not
understand him."

For the first time his expression changed. A sudden light swept across
his face, and in a moment it was glowing with sensibility and
enthusiasm. She looked at him astonished. He stood before her revealed
in a new light, and, although unwillingly, she saw him with different
eyes.

"Not understand Shelley! Ah! but that is because you have not tried,
then. If you had, you would not only understand, but you would love
him."

She shook her head. In reality she felt that he was right, that her
languid attempts to read him by a drawing-room fire, with the _Queen_
beside her, and her mind very full of very little things, had not been
the spirit in which to approach a great poet. But, partly out of womanly
perversity, and partly out of curiosity to hear what he would say, she
chose to dissent from him.

"I find him too mystical," she said; "too incomprehensible."

He looked down at her from his superior height with kindling eyes. It
was odd how greatly she was surprised in him. She had imagined him to be
a cynic.

"Mystical!" he repeated. "Yes, in a certain sense, he is so; and it is
his greatest charm. But incomprehensible!--no. The essence of all
artistic poetry is in the perfect blending of matter and form, so that
the meaning creeps in upon us, but with a certain vagueness, a certain
indefiniteness, which reaches us more in the shade of a dreamy
consciousness than through the understanding. May I give you