always dipping into those poets now, always drawing water from the wells
of literature. By the way, she was head over heels in debt to _Sordello_,
and was working double time to pay him off. She reported her progress
with glee. It was "only a hundred and thirty-eight more pages, Dr.
Cautley. In forty-six days I shall have finished _Sordello_."

"Then you will have done what I never did in my whole life."

It amused Cautley to talk to Miss Quincey. She wore such an air of
adventure; she was so fresh and innocent in her excursions into the
realms of gold; and when she sat handling her little bits of Tennyson
and Browning as if they had been rare nuggets recently dug up there, what
could he do but feign astonishment and interest? He had travelled
extensively in the realms of gold. He was acquainted with all the poets
and intimate with most; he knew some of them so well as to be able to
make jokes at their expense. He was at home in their society. Beside his
light-hearted intimacy Miss Cursiter's academic manner showed like the
punctilious advances of an outsider. But he was terribly modern this
young man. He served strange gods, healers and regenerators whose names
had never penetrated to St. Sidwell's. Some days he was really dreadful;
he shook his head over the _Idylls of the King_, made no secret of his
unbelief in _The Princess_, and shamelessly declared that a great deal of
_In Memoriam_ would go where Mendelssohn and the old crinolines have
gone.

Then something very much worse than that happened; Miss Quincey gave him
a copy of the "Address to the Students and Teachers of St. Sidwell's,"
and it made him laugh. She pointed out the bit about the healers and
regenerators, and refreshing yourself at the wells of literature. "That
is a beautiful passage," said Miss Quincey.