on entertaining developments.
Consequently, when my poet turned up, I was as demure as you please. He
was a fox, that man. He began with the fixed purpose of irritating me
into liking him. The tactics he displayed were unique. He never came
when I expected him, and when he did come he was careful to go just when
he thought he had scored a point. If any other man happened in, he first
eclipsed him and then left him to me. I saw through that game at once.
He understood perfectly that if I preferred the other man I was all the
more obliged to him for going, and if I preferred him to the other man I
was the sorrier to see him leave. In addition to this, whatever subject
I broached, he led it by tangential flights to Love. That Machiavelli
_en herbe_ knew that to talk love is to make love. And talk of love he
did, no, but in the most impersonal manner. To hear him discant you
would have thought his wings were sprouting. Love, as he expressed it,
was a sentiment which ennobled every other; a purifying and exalting
light. It was the most gracious of despots. It banished the material; it
beckoned to the ideal. It turned satiety into a vagabond that had not
where to lay its head. It was the reduction of the world, creation, and
all the universe to a single being. It was an enchanted upland,
inhibited to the herd. It was a chimera to the vulgar, a crown to the
refined. 'A perfect lover,' he said, 'must needs be an aristocrat.' And
if you will believe me, I actually thought he meant what he said. In
spite of myself, I was becoming interested. There were new horizons
before me. I seemed to discern something hitherto unseen. My dear, for
the moment I felt myself going. I was at the foot of his enchanted
upland. I was almost willing to take him for guide. At first I had been
merely amused. Once, even, when he quoted the 'Two souls with but a
single thought,' I suggested that that must mean but half a thought
apiece. The quiet dignity which he then displayed almost fetched me. He
had the air of a prelate in whose presence an oaf has trampled on a
crucifix. He kept up that sort of thing for two months. To me his
sincerity was beyond peradventure. Not once did he speak in a personal
way. I was beginning to wonder when he would stop beating about the
bush, and I not only wondered, I believe I even wished that he would be
a little more enterprising and a trifle less immaterial. Presently I
detected a symptom or two which told me that the en