then fumbled for another. After a distressing search a fresh discovery
would be made, and produced in the same way, until, by means of repeated
attacks, he had stirred his audience to a degree of animation quite
remarkable in these gatherings. Whether they were stirred by his
enthusiasm for poetry or by the contortions which a human being was
going through for their benefit, it would be hard to say. At length Mr.
Rodney sat down impulsively in the middle of a sentence, and, after a
pause of bewilderment, the audience expressed its relief at being able
to laugh aloud in a decided outburst of applause.

Mr. Rodney acknowledged this with a wild glance round him, and, instead
of waiting to answer questions, he jumped up, thrust himself through
the seated bodies into the corner where Katharine was sitting, and
exclaimed, very audibly:

"Well, Katharine, I hope I've made a big enough fool of myself even for
you! It was terrible! terrible! terrible!"

"Hush! You must answer their questions," Katharine whispered, desiring,
at all costs, to keep him quiet. Oddly enough, when the speaker was no
longer in front of them, there seemed to be much that was suggestive in
what he had said. At any rate, a pale-faced young man with sad eyes was
already on his feet, delivering an accurately worded speech with perfect
composure. William Rodney listened with a curious lifting of his upper
lip, although his face was still quivering slightly with emotion.

"Idiot!" he whispered. "He's misunderstood every word I said!"

"Well then, answer him," Katharine whispered back.

"No, I shan't! They'd only laugh at me. Why did I let you persuade me
that these sort of people care for literature?" he continued.

There was much to be said both for and against Mr. Rodney's paper. It
had been crammed with assertions that such-and-such passages, taken
liberally from English, French, and Italian, are the supreme pearls of
literature. Further, he was fond of using metaphors which, compounded
in the study, were apt to sound either cramped or out of place as he
delivered them in fragments. Literature was a fresh garland of spring
flowers, he said, in which yew-berries and the purple nightshade mingled
with the various tints of the anemone; and somehow or other this garland
encircled marble brows. He had read very badly some very beautiful
quotations. But through his manner and his confusion of language there
had emerged some passion of feeling which, as he