us are poets of one sort or another when we
love. Do you not understand? To-day I do not love you any more than I
do Hecuba. Is it not strange that I should tell you this and not be
moved at all? Is it not laughable that we should stand here at the
last, two feet apart as things physical go, and be as profoundly
severed as if an ocean tumbled between us?"

He fell to walking to and fro, his hands behind his back. She waited,
used as she was to his unstable temperament, a trifle puzzled.
Presently he spoke:

"There was a time when a master-poet was needed. He was
found--nay,--rather made. Fate hastily caught up a man not very
different from the run of men--one with a taste for stringing phrases
and with a comedy or so to his discredit. Fate merely bid him love a
headstrong child newly released from the nursery."

"We know her well enough," she said. "The girl was faithless, and
tyrannous, and proud, and coquettish, and unworthy, and false, and
inconstant. She was black as hell and dark as night in both her person
and her living. You were not niggardly of vituperation."

And he grimaced. "Faith," he replied, "but sonnets are a more natural
form of expression than affidavits, and they are made effective by
compliance with different rules. I find no flagrant fault with you
to-day. You were a child of seventeen, the darling of a noble house,
and an actor--yes, and not even a pre-eminent actor--a gross, poor
posturing vagabond, just twice your age, presumed to love you. What
child would not amuse herself with such engaging toys? Vivacity and
prettiness and cruelty are the ordinary attributes of kittenhood. So
you amused yourself. And I submitted with clear eyes, because I could
not help it. Yes, I who am by nature not disposed to underestimate my
personal importance--I submitted, because your mockery was more
desirable than the adoration of any other woman. And all this helped
to make a master-poet of me. Eh, why not, when such monstrous passions
spoke through me--as if some implacable god elected to play godlike
music on a mountebank's lute? And I made admirable plays. Why not,
when there was no tragedy more poignant than mine?--and where in any
comedy was any figure one-half so ludicrous as mine? Ah, yes, Fate
gained her ends, as always."

He was a paunchy, inconsiderable little man. By ordinary his elongated
features and high, bald forehead loaned him an aspect of serene and
axiom-based wisdo