irthday ("I thought," said Lucia, "he had forgotten that I ever had a
birthday"). It was an early copy of Rickman's tragedy _The Triumph of
Life_, just published. His keen eyes watched her handling it.

"He suspects," thought Kitty, "and he's testing her."

But Lucia's equanimity survived. "Am I to read it now?"

"As you like."

She carried the book up to her own room and did not appear till
lunch-time. In her absence Horace seemed a little uneasy; but he went
on making himself agreeable to Kitty. "He must be pretty desperate,"
thought she, "if he thinks it worth while." Apparently he did think it
worth while, though he allowed no sign of desperation to appear.
Lucia, equally discreet, avoided ostentatious privacy. They sat out
all afternoon under the beechtrees while she read, flaunting _The
Triumph of Life_ in his very eyes. He watched every movement of her
face that changed as it were to the cadence of the verse. It was
always so, he remembered, when she was strongly moved. At last she
finished and he smiled.

"You like your birthday present?"

"Very much. But Horace, he has done what you said was impossible."

"Anybody would have said it was impossible. Modern drama in blank
verse, you know--"

"Yes. It ought to have been all wrong. But because he's both a great
poet and a great dramatist, it's all right, you see. Look," she said,
pointing to a passage that she dared not read. "Those are human
voices. Could anything be simpler and more natural? But it's blank
verse because it couldn't be more perfectly expressed in prose."

"Yes, yes. I wonder how he does it."

"It would have been impossible to anybody else."

"It remains impossible. If it's ever played, it will be played because
of Rickman's stage-craft and inimitable technique, not because of his
blank verse."

She put the book down; took up her work, and said no more. Horace
seemed to have found his answer and to be satisfied. "A fool," thought
Kitty; "but he shall have his chance." So she left them alone together
that evening.

But Jewdwine was very far from being satisfied, either with Lucia or
himself. Lucia had refused to play to him yesterday because she had a
headache; she had refused to walk with him to-day because she was
tired; and to-night she would not sit up to talk to him because she
had another headache. That evening he had all but succumbed to a
terrible temptation. It was so long since he had been alone with
Lucia, and there was s