conveyed a certain weary but polite forbearance.

Lucia herself, he noticed, had an ardent look, as if a particularly
interesting idea had just occurred to her. He wished it hadn't. An
idea of Lucia's would commit him to an opinion of his own; and at the
moment Jewdwine was not prepared to abandon himself to anything so
definite and irretrievable. He had not yet made up his mind about
Rickman, and did not want to make it up now. Certainty was impossible
owing to his somewhat embarrassing acquaintance with the man. That,
again, was where Lucia had come in. Her vision of him would be free
and undisturbed by any suggestion of his bodily presence.

Meanwhile, Rickman's poem, or rather the first two Acts of his
neo-classic drama, _Helen in Leuce_, lay on Lucia's lap. Jewdwine had
obtained it under protest and with much secrecy. He had promised
Rickman, solemnly, not to show it to a soul; but he had shown it to
Lucia. It was all right, he said, so long as he refrained from
disclosing the name of the person who had written it. Not that she
would have been any the wiser if he had.

"And it was you who discovered him?" Her voice lingered with a
peculiarly tender and agreeable vibration on the "you." He closed his
eyes and let that, too, sink into him.

"Yes," he murmured, "nobody else has had a hand in it--as yet."

"And what are you going to do with him now you have discovered him?"

He opened his eyes, startled by the uncomfortable suggestion. It had
not yet occurred to him that the discovery of Rickman could entail any