"After the heathen pattern. He dipped his pen in mire."

"What is mire?--water and earth. What are we?--water and earth. Mire
is humanity, and holds in itself not only the roots of the tree,
but the germ of the flower. A poet who is too delicate to plant
his thought in earth must be content to give it but the life of a
parasite: it can have no separate existence of its own."

"But one need not be bad to be great."

"Nor need one be good to be great," returned Anita sarcastically.
"Alfred de Musset was a peculiar type of a peculiar time. He did not
imagine: he felt, he lived, he was himself, and was original, like a
new variety of flower or a new species of insect. Tennyson has gleaned
from everybody's fields: our Alfred gathered only from his own. The
one is made, the other is born."

"Come away," said Afra impatiently: "no one can speak while Anita
is on her hobby. Besides, I must get home early to trim a bonnet for
to-morrow;" and without more leavetaking than a "Good-evening," which
included every one, we found ourselves in the street.

"Who is Anita?" I asked.

"She is nobody just now: what she will be remains to be seen. Her
family wish her to be an artist: she wishes to adopt the stage as a
profession, and is studying for it _sub rosa_. Did you ever see a more
tragic face?"

"Poor thing!" I involuntarily exclaimed.