ions write poetry," she went on. "I can't bear to think of it
sometimes--because, of course, it's none of it any good. But then one
needn't read it--"

"You don't encourage me to write a poem," said Ralph.

"But you're not a poet, too, are you?" she inquired, turning upon him
with a laugh.

"Should I tell you if I were?"

"Yes. Because I think you speak the truth," she said, searching him for
proof of this apparently, with eyes now almost impersonally direct. It
would be easy, Ralph thought, to worship one so far removed, and yet of
so straight a nature; easy to submit recklessly to her, without thought
of future pain.

"Are you a poet?" she demanded. He felt that her question had an
unexplained weight of meaning behind it, as if she sought an answer to a
question that she did not ask.

"No. I haven't written any poetry for years," he replied. "But all the
same, I don't agree with you. I think it's the only thing worth doing."

"Why do you say that?" she asked, almost with impatience, tapping her
spoon two or three times against the side of her cup.

"Why?" Ralph laid hands on the first words that came to mind. "Because,
I suppose, it keeps an ideal alive which might die otherwise."

A curious change came over her face, as if the flame of her mind were
subdued; and she looked at him ironically and with the expression which
he had called sad before, for want of a better name for it.

"I don't know that there's much sense in having ideals," she said.

"But you have them," he replied energetically. "Why do we call them
ideals? It's a stupid word. Dreams, I mean--"

She followed his words with parted lips, as though to answer eagerly
when he had done; but as he said, "Dreams, I mean," the door of the
drawing-room swung open, and so remained for a perceptible instant. They
both held themselves silent, her lips still parted.

Far off, they heard the rustle of skirts. Then the owner of the skirts
appeared in the doorway, which she almost filled, nearly concealing the
figure of a very much smaller lady who accompanied her.

"My aunts!" Katharine murmured, under her breath. Her tone had a hint of
tragedy in it, but no less, Ralph thought, than the situation required.
She addressed the larger lady as Aunt Millicent; the smaller was Aunt
Celia, Mrs. Milvain, who had lately undertaken the task of marrying
Cyril to his wife. Both ladies, but Mrs. Cosham (Aunt Millicent)
in particular, had that look of heightened, smo