Rickman stooped, picked up a sod and examined it carefully.

"Thank you very much. It _was_ mine. I was afraid it was lost."

"It would have been a great pity if it had been."

Mr. Rickman dropped his sod.

She answered the question that appeared in his eyes, though not on his
tongue. "Yes, I read it. It was printed, you see. I read it before I
could make up my mind whether I might or not."

"It was all right. But I wish you hadn't."

To look at Mr. Rickman you would have said that all his mind was
concentrated on the heel of his boot, as it slowly but savagely ground
the sod to dust. Even so, the action seemed to say, even so could he
have destroyed that sonnet.

"What did you think of it?"

He had looked up, when she least expected, with his disarming and
ingenuous smile. Lucia felt that he had laid an ambush for her by his
abstraction; the question and the smile shot, flashed, out of it with
a directness that made subterfuge impossible.

The seriousness of the question was what made it so awkward for a lady
with the pleasure-giving instinct. If Mr. Rickman had merely asked her
if she liked his new straw hat with the olive green ribbon (supposing
them to be on terms that made such a question possible) she would
probably have said "Yes," whether she liked it or not; because she
wanted to give pleasure, because she didn't care a straw about his
straw hat. But when Mr. Rickman asked her how she liked his sonnet, he
was talking about the things that really mattered; and in the things
that really mattered Lucia was sincerity itself.

"I thought," said she, "I thought the first dozen lines extremely
beautiful."

"In a sonnet _every_ line should be beautiful--should be perfect."

"Oh--if you're aiming at perfection."

"Why, what else in Heaven's name should I aim at?"

Lucia was silent; and he mistook her silence for distrust.

"I don't want you to judge me by that sonnet."

"But I shouldn't dream of judging you by that sonnet, any more than I
should judge that sonnet by its last two lines. They're not the last
you'll ever write."

"They're the last you will ever read."

"Well, it's something to have written one good sonnet."

"One swallow doesn't make a spring."

"No; but it tells us spring is coming, and the other swallows."

"There won't be any other swallows. All my swallows have flown."

"Oh, they'll fly back again, you'll see, if you wait till next
spring."

"You weren't serious just now w