probably attracted her most powerfully was the fact that he intimately
knew the man who still held her woman's heart in the hollow of his hand.
It was half in play, therefore, that she had asked him that question.

Why did he make love to her? He did not know. Perhaps it was the
irresistible desire to be petted which young poets share with
domesticated cats. But what should he tell her? Polite platitudes were
out of place between them.

Besides he knew the penalty of all tender entanglements. Women treat
love as if it were an extremely tenuous wire that can be drawn out
indefinitely. This is a very expensive process. It costs us the most
precious, the only irretrievable thing in the universe--time. And to him
time was song; for money he did not care. The Lord had hallowed his lips
with rhythmic speech; only in the intervals of his singing might he
listen to the voice of his heart--strangest of all watches, that tells
the time not by minutes and hours, but by the coming and going of love.

The woman beside him seemed to read his thoughts.

"Child, child," she said, "why will you toy with love? Like Jehovah, he
is a jealous god, and nothing but the whole heart can placate him. Woe
to the woman who takes a poet for a lover. I admit it is fascinating,
but it is playing _va banque_. In fact, it is fatal. Art or love will
come to harm. No man can minister equally to both. A genuine poet is
incapable of loving a woman."

"Pshaw! You exaggerate. Of course, there is a measure of truth in what
you say, but it is only one side of the truth, and the truth, you know,
is always Janus-faced. In fact, it often has more than two faces. I can