and butter for Mrs. Hilbery, who was in her room with a cold, she rose
to go upstairs.

Ralph held the door open for her, and then stood with clasped hands in
the middle of the room. His eyes were bright, and, indeed, he scarcely
knew whether they beheld dreams or realities. All down the street and
on the doorstep, and while he mounted the stairs, his dream of
Katharine possessed him; on the threshold of the room he had dismissed
it, in order to prevent too painful a collision between what he dreamt
of her and what she was. And in five minutes she had filled the shell
of the old dream with the flesh of life; looked with fire out of
phantom eyes. He glanced about him with bewilderment at finding
himself among her chairs and tables; they were solid, for he grasped
the back of the chair in which Katharine had sat; and yet they were
unreal; the atmosphere was that of a dream. He summoned all the
faculties of his spirit to seize what the minutes had to give him; and
from the depths of his mind there rose unchecked a joyful recognition
of the truth that human nature surpasses, in its beauty, all that our
wildest dreams bring us hints of.

Katharine came into the room a moment later. He stood watching her
come towards him, and thought her more beautiful and strange than his
dream of her; for the real Katharine could speak the words which
seemed to crowd behind the forehead and in the depths of the eyes, and
the commonest sentence would be flashed on by this immortal light. And
she overflowed the edges of the dream; he remarked that her softness
was like that of some vast snowy owl; she wore a ruby on her finger.

"My mother wants me to tell you," she said, "that she hopes you have
begun your poem. She says every one ought to write poetry. . . . All