rd what he said to you," she went on almost fiercely. "That's
why I hate young poets. He says there is only you to hate."

"So, of course, you hate me?"

"I think I do. I wish I had never heard of you. I wish he had never
seen you. I hope you will never come again. I haven't looked at your
poems that he praises so. He says they are beautiful. Very well, I
shall hate them _because_ they are beautiful. He says they have more
life in them than his. Do you understand _now_ why I hate them and
you? He was young before you came here. You have made him feel that he
is old, that he must die. I don't know what else he said to you. Shall
I tell you what he said to me? He said that the world will forget him
when it's listening to you."

"You misunderstood him." He thought that he understood her; but it
puzzled him that, adoring Fielding as she did, she yet permitted
herself to doubt.

"Do you suppose I thought that he grudged you your fame? Because he
doesn't. But I do."

"You needn't. At present it only exists in his imagination."

"That's enough. If it exists there--"

"You mean, it will go down the ages?"

She nodded.

"And you don't want it to go?"

"Not unless his goes too, and goes farther."

"You need hardly be afraid."

"I'm _not_ afraid. Only, he has always stood alone, so high that no
one has touched him. I've always seen him that way, all my life--and I
can't bear to see him any other way. I can't bear any one to touch
him, or even to come anywhere near him."

"No one ever will touch him. Whoever comes after him, he will always
stand alone. And," he added gently, "you will always see him so."

"Yes," she said, but in a voice that told him she was still
unconsoled. "If I had seen him when he was young, I suppose I should
always see him young. Not that I care about that so much. His youth is
the part of him that interests me least; perhaps because it was never
in any way a part of me."

He looked at her. Did she realize how far Fielding's youth, if report
spoke truly, had belonged to, or in her own words, "been a part of"
other women? Did she resent their part in him? He thought not. It was
not so much that she was jealous of Fielding's youth, as that she
shrank from any appearance of disloyalty to his age.

"And yet," she said, "I feel that no one has a right to be young when
he is old. I hate young poets because they are young. I hate my own
youth--"

Her youth? Yes, it was youth that leapt quiver