-about the sea."

"How? In prose?"

"No. That's the worst of it, I suppose."

And again the faint wave of color went over her face to her neck.

"Do you really feel so criminal? Then what ought I to feel?"

"You? Now that is really cruel!" she cried, getting up quickly, almost
as if she meant to hurry away.

But she only stood there in front of him, near the window.

"Never mind!" she said. "Only you remember that Madre tried. She had
never said much about it to me. But now and then from just a word I know
that she feels bad, that she wishes very much she could do something.
Only the other day she said to me, 'We have the instinct, men the
vocabulary.' She was meaning that you had. She even told me to ask you
something that I had asked her, and she said, 'I feel all the things
that he can explain.' And there was something in her voice that hurt
me--for her. And Madre is so clever. Isn't she clever?"

"Yes."

"And if Madre can't do things, you can imagine that I feel rather absurd
now that I'm telling you."

"Yes, being just as you are, Vere, I can quite imagine that you do. But
we can have sweet feelings of absurdity that only arise from something
moral within us, a moral delicacy. However, would you like me to look at
what you have been writing about the sea?"

"Yes, if you can do it quite seriously."

"I could not do it in any other way."

"Then--thank you."

She went out of the room, not without a sort of simple dignity that was
utterly removed from conceit or pretentiousness.

What a strange end, this, to their laughter!

Vere was away several minutes, during which at first Artois sat quite
still, leaning back, with his great frame stretched out, and his hands
once more behind his head. His intellect was certainly very much awake
now, and he was setting a guard upon it, to watch it carefully, lest it
should be ruthless, even with Vere. And was he not setting also another
guard to watch the softness of his nature, lest it should betray him
into foolish kindness?

Yet, after a minute, he said to himself that he was wasting his time
in both these proceedings. For Vere's eyes were surely a touchstone
to discover honesty. There is something merciless in the purity of
untarnished youth. What can it not divine at moments?

Artois poured out another cup of tea and drank it, considering the
little funny situation. Vere and he with a secret from Hermione shared
between them! Vere submitting verses to hi