me."

This was quite a long speech for her!

"Then poems about love appeal to you?" I asked surprised.

"Why not?"

"Why not indeed, only you always have seemed so austere and aloof, I
hardly thought such a subject would have interested you!"

She gave a little shrug of her shoulders.

"Perhaps even the working bees have dreams."

"Have you ever been in love?"

She laughed softly, the first time I have ever heard her laugh. It gave
me a thrill.

"I don't think so! I have never talked to any men. I mean men of our
class."

This relieved me.

"But you dream?"

"Not seriously."

Burton announced luncheon at that moment, and we went in.

We spoke of the rain, and she said she liked being out in the wet. She
had walked all down the _Avenue Henri Martin_ to the _Bois_. We spoke of
the war news, and the political situation, and at last we were alone
again in the salon.

"Now read, will you please."

I lay back in my chair and shaded my eye with my hand.

"Do you want any special poem?"

"Read several, and then get to 'Listen Beloved,' there is a point in it
I want to discuss with you."

She took the book and settled herself with her back to the window, a
little behind me.

"Come forward, please. It is more comfortable to listen when one can see
the reader."

She rose reluctantly, and pulled her chair nearer me and the fire, then
she began. She chose those poems the least sensuous, and the more
abstract. I watched her all the time. She read "Rutland Gate," and her
voice showed how she sympathized with the man. Then she read "Atavism,"
and her little highly bred face looked savage! I realized with a quiver
of delight that she is the most passionate creature,--of course she is,
with that father and mother! Wait until I have awakened her enough, and
she will break through all the barriers of convention and reserve, and
pride.

Ah! That will be a moment!

"Now read 'Listen Beloved.'"

She turned the pages, found it, and began, and when she reached the two
verses which had so interested me, she looked up for a second, and her
lovely eyes were misty and far away. Then she went on and finished,
letting the book drop in her lap.

"That accords with your theory of reincarnation, that souls meet again
and again?"

"Yes."

"In one of the books I got upon the subject it said all marriages were
karmic debts or rewards. I wonder what our marriage is, don't you?
Perhaps we were two enemies who injured e