my relations write poetry," she went on. "I can't bear to think of it
sometimes--because, of course, it's none of it any good. But then one
needn't read it--"

"You don't encourage me to write a poem," said Ralph.

"But you're not a poet, too, are you?" she inquired, turning upon him
with a laugh.

"Should I tell you if I were?"

"Yes. Because I think you speak the truth," she said, searching him
for proof of this apparently, with eyes now almost impersonally
direct. It would be easy, Ralph thought, to worship one so far
removed, and yet of so straight a nature; easy to submit recklessly to
her, without thought of future pain.

"Are you a poet?" she demanded. He felt that her question had an
unexplained weight of meaning behind it, as if she sought an answer to
a question that she did not ask.

"No. I haven't written any poetry for years," he replied. "But all the
same, I don't agree with you. I think it's the only thing worth
doing."

"Why do you say that?" she asked, almost with impatience, tapping her
spoon two or three times against the side of her cup.

"Why?" Ralph laid hands on the first words that came to mind.
"Because, I suppose, it keeps an ideal alive which might die