d with his own.

He turned his eyes swiftly and met hers. She colored faintly and
dropped her lids. Had she lowered those broad lids over a warm glow?

"Now I know what you look like!" he exclaimed, and was surprised to
find that his voice was not quite steady. "A Nordic princess."

"Oh! That is the very most charming compliment ever paid me."

"You look a pretty unadulterated type for this late date. I don't mean
in color only, of course; there are millions of blondes."

"My mother was a brunette."

"Oh, yes, you are a case of atavism, no doubt. If I were as good a
poet as one of my brother columnists I should have written a poem to
you long since. I can see you sweeping northward over the steppes of
Russia as the ice-caps retreated . . . reembodied on the Baltic coast
or the shores of the North Sea . . . sleeping for ages in one of the
Megaliths, to rise again a daughter of the Brythons, or of a Norse
Viking . . . west into Anglia to appear once more as a Priestess of
the Druids chaunting in a sacred grove . . . or as Boadicea--who
knows! But no prose can regenerate that shadowy time. I see
it--prehistory--as a swaying mass of ghostly multitudes, but always
pressing on--on . . . as we shall appear, no doubt, ten thousand years
hence if all histories are destroyed--as no doubt they will be. If I
were an epic poet I might possibly find words and rhythm to fit that
white vision, but it is wholly beyond the practical vocabulary and
mental make-up of a newspaper man of the twentieth century. Some of us
write very good poetry indeed, but it is not precisely inspired, and it
certainly is not epic. One would have to retire to a cave like Buddha
and fast."

"You write singularly pure English, in spite of what seems to me a
marked individuality of style, and--ah--your apparent delight in
slang!" Her voice was quite even, although her eyes had glowed and
sparkled and melted at his poetic phantasma of her past (as what
woman's would not?). "I find a rather painful effort to be--what do
you call it? highbrow?--in some of your writers."

"The youngsters. I went through that phase. We all do. But we
emerge. I mean, of course, when we have anything to express.
Metaphysical verbosity is a friendly refuge. But as a rule years and
hard knocks drive us to directness of expression. . . . But poets must
begin young. And New York is not exactly a hot-bed of romance."

"Do you think that romance is impossible i