d when he turned that she was looking up
eagerly into his face.

"Nothing short of a meditation on the seven heavens can excuse such
absorption of mind," she said.

"You came like a spirit without my suspecting that you were near," he
answered, smiling.

She laughed softly, giving him her full face as she looked up with her
unfathomable eyes and tremulous red mouth. At the first glance he
noticed a change in her--an awakening he would have called it--and for a
minute he lost himself in a vague surmise as to the cause. Then all
other consciousness was swept away by pure delight in the mere physical
fact of her presence. For the instant, while they walked together
through the same sunshine over the same pavement, she was as much his
own as if they stood with each other upon a deserted star.

"It has been so long since I really saw you," she said, after a moment's
pause, "I wondered, at first, if you were ill, but had that been so I
was sure you would have written me."

Even her voice, he thought, had altered; it was fuller, deeper, more
exquisitely vibrant, as if some wonderful experience had enriched it.

"Connie was ill, not I," he answered quietly. "I took her South for a
fortnight, and since getting back I've hardly been able to go anywhere
except to the office."

She glanced at him with a sympathy in which he detected a slight
surprise--for so long as Connie had been well and happy he had rarely
mentioned her name even to his closest friends.

"I hope, at least, that she is better by now," responded Laura with
conventional courtesy.

"Oh, yes, very much better," he replied; "but tell me of yourself--I
want to hear of you. Is there other verse?"

For a minute she looked away to the rapidly moving vehicles in the
street; then turning quickly toward him, she spoke with one of the
impulsive gestures he had always found so charming and so
characteristic.

"There is no verse--there will never be any more," she said. "Shall I
tell you a secret?"

He bent his head. "A dozen if you like."

"Well, there's only one--it's this: I wasn't born to be a poet. It was
all a big mistake, and I've found it out in plenty of time to stop. I'd
rather do other things, you know; I'd rather live."

"Live," he repeated curiously; and the incidents of his own life flashed
quickly, one by one, across his mind. Marriage, birth, death, the
illusion of desire, the disenchantment of possession; to place one's
faith in the external