from her side of the tea-table, in the first place by swaying her
head, and in the second by remarking:

"No, men are not the same as women. I fancy Alfred Tennyson spoke the
truth about that as about many other things. How I wish he'd lived to
write 'The Prince'--a sequel to 'The Princess'! I confess I'm almost
tired of Princesses. We want some one to show us what a good man can
be. We have Laura and Beatrice, Antigone and Cordelia, but we have no
heroic man. How do you, as a poet, account for that, Mr. Denham?"

"I'm not a poet," said Ralph good-humoredly. "I'm only a solicitor."

"But you write, too?" Mrs. Cosham demanded, afraid lest she should be
balked of her priceless discovery, a young man truly devoted to
literature.

"In my spare time," Denham reassured her.

"In your spare time!" Mrs. Cosham echoed. "That is a proof of
devotion, indeed." She half closed her eyes, and indulged herself in a
fascinating picture of a briefless barrister lodged in a garret,
writing immortal novels by the light of a farthing dip. But the
romance which fell upon the figures of great writers and illumined
their pages was no false radiance in her case. She carried her pocket
Shakespeare about with her, and met life fortified by the words of the
poets. How far she saw Denham, and how far she confused him with some
hero of fiction, it would be hard to say. Literature had taken
possession even of her memories. She was matching him, presumably,
with certain characters in the old novels, for she came out, after a
pause, with: