how out of the scent of the grass, and I would like to tell
them to you, to the world. But how can I? My tongue is tied. I have
tried, by the spoken word, just now, to describe to you the effect on me
of the scent of the grass. But I have not succeeded. I have no more
than hinted in awkward speech. My words seem gibberish to me. And yet I
am stifled with desire to tell. Oh!--" he threw up his hands with a
despairing gesture--"it is impossible! It is not understandable! It is
incommunicable!"

"But you do talk well," she insisted. "Just think how you have improved
in the short time I have known you. Mr. Butler is a noted public
speaker. He is always asked by the State Committee to go out on stump
during campaign. Yet you talked just as well as he the other night at
dinner. Only he was more controlled. You get too excited; but you will
get over that with practice. Why, you would make a good public speaker.
You can go far--if you want to. You are masterly. You can lead men, I
am sure, and there is no reason why you should not succeed at anything
you set your hand to, just as you have succeeded with grammar. You would
make a good lawyer. You should shine in politics. There is nothing to
prevent you from making as great a success as Mr. Butler has made. And
minus the dyspepsia," she added with a smile.

They talked on; she, in her gently persistent way, returning always to
the need of thorough grounding in education and to the advantages of
Latin as part of the foundation for any career. She drew her ideal of
the successful man, and it was largely in her father's image, with a few
unmistakable lines and touches of color from the image of Mr. Butler. He
listened eagerly, with receptive ears, lying on his back and looking up
and joying in each movement of her lips as she talked. But his brain was
not receptive. There was nothing alluring in the pictures she drew, and
he was aware of a dull pain of disappointment and of a sharper ache of
love for her. In all she said there was no mention of his writing, and
the manuscripts he had brought to read lay neglected on the ground.

At last, in a pause, he glanced at the sun, measured its height above the
horizon, and suggested his manuscripts by picking them up.

"I had forgotten," she said quickly. "And I am so anxious to hear."

He read to her a story, one that he flattered himself was among his very
best. He called it "The Wine of Life," and the win