he had never dreamed it could be. He forgot himself and stared at her
with hungry eyes. Here was something to live for, to win to, to fight
for--ay, and die for. The books were true. There were such women in the
world. She was one of them. She lent wings to his imagination, and
great, luminous canvases spread themselves before him whereon loomed
vague, gigantic figures of love and romance, and of heroic deeds for
woman's sake--for a pale woman, a flower of gold. And through the
swaying, palpitant vision, as through a fairy mirage, he stared at the
real woman, sitting there and talking of literature and art. He listened
as well, but he stared, unconscious of the fixity of his gaze or of the
fact that all that was essentially masculine in his nature was shining in
his eyes. But she, who knew little of the world of men, being a woman,
was keenly aware of his burning eyes. She had never had men look at her
in such fashion, and it embarrassed her. She stumbled and halted in her
utterance. The thread of argument slipped from her. He frightened her,
and at the same time it was strangely pleasant to be so looked upon. Her
training warned her of peril and of wrong, subtle, mysterious, luring;
while her instincts rang clarion-voiced through her being, impelling her
to hurdle caste and place and gain to this traveller from another world,
to this uncouth young fellow with lacerated hands and a line of raw red
caused by the unaccustomed linen at his throat, who, all too evidently,
was soiled and tainted by ungracious existence. She was clean, and her
cleanness revolted; but she was woman, and she was just beginning to
learn the paradox of woman.

"As I was saying--what was I saying?" She broke off abruptly and laughed
merrily at her predicament.

"You was saying that this man Swinburne failed bein' a great poet
because--an' that was as far as you got, miss," he prompted, while to