sage as before. Awkwardly as men do such things, Tristrem
disengaged his hand. The girl made one little effort to detain it, and
for a moment her lips moved; but she said nothing, and when the hand had
gone from her, she turned with a toss of the head and disappeared in the
night.

Soon after, Tristrem turned, too, and found his way to the smoking-room.
In some way the caress which he had eluded had left a balm. He was as
hopeful as before, and he smiled in silent amusement at the ups and
downs of his needless fears. In a corner of the room was Yorke.

"I have been looking at the sea," he said, as he took a seat at his
side; "it is captious as wine."

"You are a poet, are you not?" Yorke spoke not as though he were paying
a compliment, but in the matter-of-fact fashion in which one drummer
will say "Dry goods?" to another.

"No; I wish I were. I have never written."

"It's a popular prejudice to suppose that a poet must write. The
greatest of all never put pen to paper. What is there left to us of
Linus and Musaeus? Siddartha did not write, Valmiki did not know how. The
parables of the Christ were voiced, not written. Besides, the poet
feels--he does not spend a year, like Mallarme, in polishing a sonnet.
De Musset is certainly the best example of the poet that France has to
offer; with him you always catch the foot-fall of the Muse--you feel, as
he felt, the inspiration. And all the more clearly in that his verses
limp. He never would have had time to express himself if he had tried to
sand-paper his thoughts. Don't you suppose that Murillo was a poet?
Don't you suppose that Guido was? Don't you think that anyone who is in
love with beauty must be? I say beauty where I might say the ideal. That
is the reason I thought you a poet. You have in your face that constant
preoccupation which is distinctive of those who pursue the intangible."

"I am not pursuing the intangible, though," Tristrem answered, with a
little sententious nod.

"Ah, who shall say? We all do. I am pursuing it myself, though not in
the sense that I attribute to you. Did you ever read Flaubert's
_Tentation_? No? Well, fancy the Sphinx crouching at sunset in the
encroaching sand. In the background is a riot of color, and overhead a
tender blue fading into salmon and the discreetest gray. Then add to
that the impression of solitude and the most absolute silence. In the
foreground flutters a Chimera, a bird with a dragon's tail and the
rainbow wing