er-maker clanging and clattering,
are all warbling more sweetly than you. The sledge-wielder pours out
more strength and certitude and joy in every blow than do you in your
whole sheaf of songs. Why, the very socialist agitator, hustled by the
police on a street corner amid the jeers of the mob, has caught the
romance of to-day as you have not caught it and where you have missed
it. He knows life and is living. Are you living, Dane Kempton?

Forgive me. I had begun to explain and reconcile our difference. I find
I am lecturing and censuring you. In defending myself, I offend. But
this I wish to say: We are so made, you and I, that your function in
life is to dream, mine to work. That you failed to make a dreamer of me
is no cause for heartache and chagrin. What of my practical nature and
analytical mind, I have generalised in my own way upon the data of life
and achieved a different code from yours. Yet I seek truth as
passionately as you. I still believe myself to be a dedicated spirit.

And what boots it, all of it? When the last word is said, we are two
men, by a thousand ties very dear to each other. There is room in our
hearts for each other as there is room in the world for both of us.
Though we have many things not in common, yet you are my dearest friend
on earth, you who have been a second father to me as well.

You have long merited this explanation, and it was cowardly of me not to
have made it before. My hope is that I have been sufficiently clear for
you to understand.

HERBERT.

V

FROM DANE KEMPTON TO HERBERT WACE

LONDON,
3 A QUEEN'S ROAD, CHELSEA, S.W.
November 16, 19--.

You sigh "Poesy and Economics," supplying the cause and thereby
admitting the fact. I wish you had shown some reluctance to see my
meaning, that you had preferred to waive the matter on the ground of
insufficient data, that you had been less eager to ferret out the
science of the thing. Do you remember how your boy's respect rose for
little Barbara whenever she cried when too readily forgiven? "She dreads
a double standard," you explained to me with generous heat. You
sympathised with her fear lest I demand less of her than of you,
honouring her insistence on an equality of duty as well as of privilege.
Is the man Herbert less proud than the child Barbara, that you speak of
a temperamental difference and ask for a special dispensation?

You are not in love (this you say in not gainsaying my attack on you,
and so fa