trained. "I will go and call Vere," she added.

"She is in the house?"

"I think so."

She went out, shutting the door behind her.

So Vere was working. Artois felt sure that her conversation with him had
given to her mind, perhaps to her heart, too, an impulse that had
caused an outburst of young energy. Ah! the blessed ardors of youth! How
beautiful they are, and, even in their occasional absurdity, how sacred.
What Hermione had said had made him realize acutely the influence which
his celebrity and its cause--the self that had made it--must have upon a
girl who was striving as Vere was. He felt a thrill of pleasure, even of
triumph, that startled him, so seldom now, jealous and careful as he was
of his literary reputation, did he draw any definite joy from it. Would
Vere ever do something really good? He found himself longing that she
might, as the proud godparent longs for his godchild to gain prizes.
He remembered the line at the close of Maeterlinck's "Pelleas and
Melisande," a line that had gone like a silver shaft into this soul when
he first heard it--"Maintenant c'est au tour de la pauvre petite" (Now
it's the child's turn.)

"Now it's the child's turn," he said it to himself, forming the words
with his lips. At that moment he was freed entirely from the selfishness
of age, and warm with a generous and noble sympathy with youth, its
aspirations, its strivings, its winged hopes. He got up from his chair.
He had a longing to go to Vere and tell her all he was feeling,
a longing to pour into her--as just then he could have poured
it--inspiration molten in a long-tried furnace. He had no need of any
one but Vere.

The doors opened and Hermione came back.

"Vere is coming, Emile," she said.

"You told her I was here?"

She looked at him swiftly, as if the ringing sound in his voice had
startled her.

"Yes. She is glad, I know. Dear little Vere!"

Her voice was dull, and she spoke--or he fancied so--rather
mechanically. He remembered all she did not know and was conscious of
her false position. In their intercourse she had so often, so generally,
been the enthusiastic sympathizer. More than she knew she had inspired
him.

"Dear Hermione! How good it is to be here with you!" he said, turning
towards her the current of his sympathy. "As one grows old one clings
to the known, the proved. That passion at least increases while so many
others fade away, the passion for all that is faithful in a shifting
w