would never have been made if he had
known the rules. How could she let him make it?

"Really, Lucy, for a nice woman you do the queerest things."

"And, really, Kitty, for a clever woman, you say the stupidest. You're
getting like Edith."

"I am not like Edith. I only say stupid things. She thinks them.
What's more, in thinking them she only thinks of herself and her
precious family. I'm thinking of you, dear, and"--Kitty's voice grew
soft--"and of him. You ought to think of him a little too."

"I _do_ think of him. I've been thinking of him all the time."

"I know you have. But don't let him suffer because of the insanely
beautiful way you have of thinking."

There was a pause, in which it was evident to Kitty that Lucia was
thinking deeply, and beautifully too.

"Have I made him suffer? I'm afraid I did once. He was valuable, and
I damaged him."

"Yes; and ever since you've been trying to put him together again; in
your own way, not his. That's fatal."

Lucia shook her head and followed her own train of thought. "Kitty, to
be perfectly honest, I think--I'm not sure, but I think--from
something he said to-day that you were right about him once. I mean
about his beginning to care too much. I'm afraid it was so, at
Harmouth, towards the end. But it isn't so any more. He tried to tell
me just now. He did it beautifully; as if he knew that that would make
me happier. At least I think that's what he meant. He didn't say much,
but I'm sure he was thinking about his marriage."

"Heaven help his wife then--if he got as far as that. I suppose you
take a beautiful view of her, too? Drop it, for goodness' sake, drop
it."

"Not I. It would mean dropping him. It's all right, Kitty. You don't
know the ways of poets."

"Perhaps not. But I know the ways of men."

Though Kitty had not accomplished her mission she so far prevailed
that she carried her Lucy off to dinner.

It was somewhere towards midnight, when all the house was quiet, that
Lucia first looked into Keith Rickman's sonnets. She had been led to
expect something in the nature of a personal revelation, and the first
sonnet struck the key-note, gave her the clue.

I asked the minist'ring priests who never tire
In love's high service, who behold their bliss
Through golden gloom of Love's dread mysteries,
What heaven there be for earth's foregone desire?

And they kept silence. But the gentle choir
Who sing Love's praises ans