agate and crystal, either, Kit Marlowe. For, as you
may perceive, sir, I have read all that lovely poem you left with me
last Thursday--"

She saw how interested he was, saw how he almost smirked. "Aha, so you
think it not quite bad, eh, the conclusion of my 'Hero and Leander'?"

"It is your best. And your middlemost, my poet, is better than aught
else in English," she said, politely, and knowing how much he delighted
to hear such remarks.

"Come, I retract my charge of foolishness, for you are plainly a wench
of rare discrimination. And yet you say I do not love you! Cynthia, you
are beautiful, you are perfect in all things. You are that heavenly
Helen of whom I wrote, some persons say, acceptably enough--How strange
it was I did not know that Helen was dark-haired and pale! for certainly
yours is that immortal loveliness which must be served by poets in life
and death."

"And I wonder how much of these ardours," she thought, "is kindled by my
praise of his verses?" She bit her lip, and she regarded him with a hint
of sadness. She said, aloud: "But I did not, after all, speak to Lord
Pevensey concerning the printing of your poem. Instead, I burned your
'Hero and Leander'."

She saw him jump, as under a whip-lash. Then he smiled again, in that
wry fashion of his. "I lament the loss to letters, for it was my only
copy. But you knew that."

"Yes, Kit, I knew it was your only copy."

"Oho! and for what reason did you burn it, may one ask?"

"I thought you loved it more than you loved me. It was my rival, I
thought--" The girl was conscious of remorse, and yet it was remorse
commingled with a mounting joy.

"And so you thought a jingle scribbled upon a bit of paper could be
your rival with me!"

Then Cynthia no longer doubted, but gave a joyous little sobbing laugh,
for the love of her disreputable dear poet was sustaining the stringent
testing she had devised. She touched his freckled hand caressingly, and
her face was as no man had ever seen it, and her voice, too, caressed
him.

"Ah, you have made me the happiest of women, Kit! Kit, I am almost
disappointed in you, though, that you do not grieve more for the loss of
that beautiful poem."

His smiling did not waver; yet the lean, red-haired man stayed
motionless. "Do I appear perturbed?" he said. "Why, but see how lightly
I take the destruction of my life-work in this, my masterpiece! For I
can assure you it was a masterpiece, the fruit of two years' toil