hem of the secret. It was the very thing that the great writers and
master-poets did. That was why they were giants. They knew how to
express what they thought, and felt, and saw. Dogs asleep in the sun
often whined and barked, but they were unable to tell what they saw that
made them whine and bark. He had often wondered what it was. And that
was all he was, a dog asleep in the sun. He saw noble and beautiful
visions, but he could only whine and bark at Ruth. But he would cease
sleeping in the sun. He would stand up, with open eyes, and he would
struggle and toil and learn until, with eyes unblinded and tongue untied,
he could share with her his visioned wealth. Other men had discovered
the trick of expression, of making words obedient servitors, and of
making combinations of words mean more than the sum of their separate
meanings. He was stirred profoundly by the passing glimpse at the
secret, and he was again caught up in the vision of sunlit spaces and
starry voids--until it came to him that it was very quiet, and he saw
Ruth regarding him with an amused expression and a smile in her eyes.

"I have had a great visioning," he said, and at the sound of his words in
his own ears his heart gave a leap. Where had those words come from?
They had adequately expressed the pause his vision had put in the
conversation. It was a miracle. Never had he so loftily framed a lofty
thought. But never had he attempted to frame lofty thoughts in words.
That was it. That explained it. He had never tried. But Swinburne had,
and Tennyson, and Kipling, and all the other poets. His mind flashed on
to his "Pearl-diving." He had never dared the big things, the spirit of
the beauty that was a fire in him. That article would be a different
thing when he was done with it. He was appalled by the vastness of the
beauty that rightfully belonged in it, and again his mind flashed and
dared, and he demanded of himself why he could not chant that beauty in
noble verse as the great poets did. And there was all the mysterious
delight and spiritual wonder of his love for Ruth. Why could he not
chant that, too, as the poets did? They had sung of love. So would he.
By God!--

And in his frightened ears he heard his exclamation echoing. Carried
away, he had breathed it aloud. The blood surged into his face, wave
upon wave, mastering the bronze of it till the blush of shame flaunted
itself from collar-rim to the roots of his hair.