e reading?" asked Philip, who could never pass a book
without looking at it.

Philip took it up and saw that it was a volume of Spanish verse, the poems
of San Juan de la Cruz, and as he opened it a sheet of paper fell out.
Philip picked it up and noticed that verse was written upon it.

"You're not going to tell me you've been occupying your leisure in writing
poetry? That's a most improper proceeding in a hospital patient."

"I was trying to do some translations. D'you know Spanish?"

"No."

"Well, you know all about San Juan de la Cruz, don't you?"

"I don't indeed."

"He was one of the Spanish mystics. He's one of the best poets they've
ever had. I thought it would be worth while translating him into English."

"May I look at your translation?"

"It's very rough," said Athelny, but he gave it to Philip with an alacrity
which suggested that he was eager for him to read it.

It was written in pencil, in a fine but very peculiar handwriting, which
was hard to read: it was just like black letter.

"Doesn't it take you an awful time to write like that? It's wonderful."

"I don't know why handwriting shouldn't be beautiful." Philip read the
first verse:

In an obscure night
With anxious love inflamed
O happy lot!
Forth unobserved I went,
My house being now at rest...

Philip looked curiously at Thorpe Athelny. He did not know whether he felt
a little shy with him or was attracted by him. He was conscious that his
manner had been slightly patronising, and he flushed as it struck him that
Athelny might have thought him ridiculous.

"What an unusual name you've got," he remarked, for something to say.

"It's a very old Yorkshire name. Once it took the head of my family a
day's hard riding to make the circuit of his estates, but the mighty are
fallen. Fast women and slow horses."

He was short-sighted and when he spoke looked at you with a peculiar
intensity. He took up his volume of poetry.

"You should read Spanish," he said. "It is a noble tongue. It has not the
mellifluousness of Italian, Italian is the language of tenors and
organ-grinders, but it has grandeur: it does not ripple like a brook in a
garden, but it surges tumultuous like a mighty river in flood."

His grandiloquence amused Philip, but he was sensitive to rhetoric; and he
listened with pleasure while Athelny, with picturesque expressions and the
fire of a real enthusia