nce to herself; to take these poems
dedicated to her as an event, not in her life or his, but in the
history of literature?

"No," she said, "you must not look at them that way. If they were, it
might be a reason for refusing. I know most people would think they'd
less right to accept what wasn't really dedicated to them. But, you
see, it's just because it isn't really dedicated to me that I can
accept it."

"But it is--"

"No, not to me. You wouldn't be so great a poet if it were. I don't
see myself here; but I see you, and your idea of me. It's--it's
dedicated to that dream of yours. Didn't I tell you your dream was
divorced from reality?"

"You told me it would be reconciled to it."

"And it is, isn't it? And the reality is worth all the dreams that
ever were?"

He could have told her that so it appeared to those who are bound in
the house of bondage; but that in Leuce, the country of deliverance,
the dream and the reality are indivisible, being both divine. He could
have told her that he had known as much five years ago; even before he
knew her.

"After all," he said, "that's admitting that they _are_ divided. And
that, if you remember, was what I said, not what you said."

Lucia evaded the issue in a fashion truly feminine. "It doesn't matter
a bit what either of us said then, so long as _you_ know now."

"There's one thing I don't know. I don't know how you really take it;
or whether you will really understand. Just now I thought you did, But
after all it seems you don't. You think I'm only trying to pay you a
stupid literary compliment. You think when I wrote those things I
didn't mean them; my imagination was simply taking a rather more
eccentric flight than usual. Isn't that so?"

"I'm certainly allowing for your imagination. I can't forget that you
are a poet. You won't let me forget it. I can't separate your genius
from the rest of you."

"And I can't separate the rest of me from it. That makes the
difference, you see." He was angry as he said that. He had wondered
whether she would deal as tenderly with his passion as she had dealt
with his dream; and she had dealt just as tenderly. But it was because
she identified the passion with the dream. He had not been prepared
for that view of it; and somehow it annoyed him. But for that, he
would never have spoken as he now did. "When I wondered how you would
take it I thought it might possibly strike you as something rather too
real, almost offensiv