discover! What if it should be no better than what preceded! For his own
part he did not, he would not much care. It was not for her poetry, it
was for herself he loved her! What she wrote was not she, and could make
no difference! It was not as if she had no genuine understanding of
poetry, no admiration or feeling for it! A poet could do well enough
with a wife who never wrote a verse, but hardly with one who had no
natural relation to it, no perception what it was! A poet in love with
one who laughed at his poetry!--that would want scanning! What or
wherein could be their relation to each other?

He is a poor poet--and Walter was such a poet--who does not know there
are better things than poetry. Keats began to discover it just ere he
died.

Walter feared therefore the coming gift, as he might that of a doubted
enchantress. It was not the less a delight, however, to remember that
she said "_your_ copy." But he must leave thinking and put on his
neck-tie! There are other things than time and tide that wait for no
man!

Lady Tremaine gave him Lufa, and she took his arm with old familiarity.
The talk at table was but such as it could hardly help being--only for
Walter it was talk with Lufa! The pleasure of talk often owes not much
to the sense of it. There is more than the intellect concerned in talk;
there is more at its root than fact or logic or lying.

When the scene changed to the drawing-room, Lufa played tolerably and
sung well, delighting Walter. She asked and received his permission to
sing "my song," as she called it, and pleased him with it more than
ever. He managed to get her into the conservatory, which was large, and