Her indifference piqued him into the spirit of opposition, and he felt
an immediate impulse to compel her reluctant interest--to arouse her
admiration of the very qualities she now disdained.

"Well, I take my poetry where I find it," he rejoined, "and that's
mostly in life and not in books."

From the quick turn of her head, the instant's lifting of her emotional
reserve, he saw that the words had arrested her imagination--that for
the first time since her entrance she had really taken in the fact of
his existence as an individual.

"Then you are not with the majority, but you are right!" she exclaimed.

"Is it not possible to be both?" he asked, pleased almost more than he
would admit by the quickening of her attention.

"I think not," she answered seriously, "don't you?"

"I never think," he laughed with his eyes upon hers, "I live."

The animation, which was like the glow from an inner illumination, shone
in her face, and he thought, as Trent had thought before him, that her
soul must burn like a golden flame within her--a flame that reached
toward life, knowledge and the veiled wonders of experience.

"And so would I if I were a man," she said.

She rose, clasping the furs at her throat, then folding Gerty in her
arms she kissed her cheek.